Weather Experiment: How to measure wind speed with a wind anemometer

Meteorologists all over the world use a wide variety of instruments to measure things like temperature, air pressure, humidity and a host of other variables. Chief Meteorologist Kevin Craig demonstrates a device know as an anemometer

An anemometer is a device that measures wind speed. There are much larger (similar devices) that have been placed all over the United States, the world for that matter, that measure wind speed and automatically sends the readings back to a computer. These anemometers take hundreds of samples each day that are available to Meteorologists looking at observations, or simply trying to comprise a forecast. These same devices can measure wind speed and gust speed in hurricanes and tornadoes too. This data becomes increasingly important for research purposes and to quantify the type of damage any storms create by assessing or quantifying the actual wind speed.