P1.5
The Impact of High Winds on the Central Business District of Oklahoma City
Dustin L. Rapp, Oklahoma Weather Center Research Experience for Undergraduates Program, Jackson, TN; and J. B. Basara and P. Hall
ABSTRACT It is critical to understand airflow through cities due to the possibilities of biological and chemical terrorist attacks, pollution, and accidental chemical spills. Currently, few studies have used continuous field measurements of wind conditions within a city to study urban air flow. This paper investigates the airflow at specific locations within the central business district (CBD) of Oklahoma City during two synoptic high wind events and one convective high wind event using data collected at fifteen sites. For the synoptic cases, wind vector magnitudes and directions were averaged for each site before and after frontal passages that impacted the CBD. For all cases, wind speed and direction comparisons were made between the individual sites within the CBD. As a result, distinct wind flow patterns within the city were deduced. Possible reasons for these wind flows resulted from the analysis of building structures, site location, and street orientation. It was also found that while airflow through Oklahoma City is extremely complex, small and large scale wind flow patterns were identifiable. As a result, this study emphasizes the need for the further analysis of wind flows through cities during typical, but complex scenarios to better understand how pollutants and chemical/biological agents might flow through a city under a wide variety of weather conditions.
Poster Session 1, Poster Session
Sunday, 11 January 2004, 5:30 PM-7:00 PM, Room 608/609
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