Is It Just Us or Has It Been Stupid Windy in Boise?

We've been quietly thinking it for a week or two. We didn't want to say it out loud in case we were totally nuts. It took something Peggy said while playing one of our contests for us to realize we weren't alone.

Weather permitting, this Saturday will be opening day at Roaring Springs. They had originally planned to open last weekend, but Mother Nature had other plans. Just two days after we hit 90º, the temps plummeted into the upper 50s. Not exactly to waterslide weather. Peggy called to win passes for the park and we commiserated over how cruddy the first two weekends of May have been. She slipped "...and then you go home and watch the wind" into the conversation.

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So, I'm not nuts. For the last two weeks, I've felt like no matter which way I'm running on the Greenbelt, I'm always running into the wind. Like, unusually strong wind. I've been training for endurance races in Boise for a decade and I never remember spring being this breezy. I thought maybe I was just being a wuss because I'm a little out of shape at the moment, but Peggy's comment leads me to believe I'm not.

So, I did some digging. Weather Underground keeps a record of all sorts of historical data from the Boise Airport Weather Station including wind speeds. I looked at the average wind speed (a speed sustained over the span of two minutes) for the first ten days in May, 2010-2020. The average was 8.55 mph. May 1-10, 2011 was the windiest of the years I looked with average winds at 10.22 mph

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How does that compare to the first ten days of May 2021? The average wind speed this year has been 10.58 mph. I'm not a meteorologist, but the numbers do prove that it is indeed windier this year than it has been over the past decade. Running into winds around 10 mph can slow you down 10-20 seconds per mile, so this explains why I feel like I'm getting my butt kicked every time I lace up!

Now, Kody Wilson at Treasure Valley Weather HQ? He knows way more about weather than I do and isn't just plugging numbers into a spreadsheet like I did. He's widely considered the most accurate forecaster in our area and even he's making jokes about how windy it is.

So the answer is, yes. It has been stupid windy in Boise.