Jim Nichols Weather Blog

As the winds howled and power lines fell, many were left asking...why is it so windy?

Well…you can thank that mess of a storm we had over the weekend. As the center of that storm moved over the New England coast it quickly intensified. At the center of this storm is low pressure, which at the time of this writing was at 28.64" or 970mb in geek speak. Right now High pressure is trying to move into Philadelphia, providing today's sunshine. It is the difference in pressure between the High and the Low that is causing the wicked winds. The stronger the difference is between the High pressure and Low pressure, the stronger the winds. Right now, with the Low is at a pressure of 28.64" and the high is sitting at a pressure of 30.32", in the weather world this is considered to be a large difference, and therefore, the reason why we got such high wind gusts.

You see, Mother Nature likes to have everything in balance. In fact, one of this planet's basic uses for weather is to balance out the atmosphere with pressure, temperatures and moisture. Of course we never get a balance and therefore we always have some sort of weather. In order to balance out the pressure, nature tries to move energy from high pressure to low pressure. That movement is reflected in winds. Now, winds will typically flow in a counterclockwise direction around the Low and clockwise around the High. This is due to a myriad of reasons that physics and thermodynamics can explain. We're not going to do that here. But, expect as the low continues its trek away from Philadelphia that incoming High pressure will allow our winds to calm down a bit later tonight.