Wind

[Texarkana]

From Google:
7 Windiest Places on Earth
#1: Mount Everest.
#2: Mount Washington.
#3: Gruissan.
#4: Pistol River.
#6: Antarctica.
#7: Tornado Alley.

Honorable mention: Texarkana’s farm.

I don’t think I have ever been somewhere so windy. It’s like living in a wind tunnel. It’s funny because while I’m new to this county, I’ve been in this general area much of my life and the wind has never been anything noteworthy. Yet for whatever reason, the wind in this immediate area is constant and strong. It also comes from nearly all directions and will often shift multiple times in a day, but the worst of it comes through the front of the property from the north and the back of the property from the south.

For those of you who live in windier than average locales, how do you deal with it?

Specifically, how do you construct your barns and shelters? Are there any materials that are preferable to others? Any maintenance tips? I have a wooden barn that was painted less than three years ago and the wind literally rips the paint off in chunks. What about orientation to prevent wind ripping through aisles or blowing straight into 3 sided sheds?

Any strategies for planting trees or hedges as windbreaks? What are the best placements?

I really never anticipated wind being this much of a factor in property planning.

[Scribbler]

I once stayed at an old house on the prairies. The house was entirely surrounded by 10 foot tall three or four foot thick lilac hedges. I think the yard was also further divided by other hedges. Outside the hedges was raw prairie constant wind. Inside the yard was a peaceful oasis sun trap. That’s the only place I have ever been on the prairies that conquered the wind. I don’t know if the hedges worked in winter.

[Simkie]

Colorado was windy, but Minnesota was a whole nother level of it. Wind that mattered–in the winter–came from the west or northwest. The barn was oriented with the aisle N/S. Stalls on the west side lost their runs for the winter. Stalls on the east side did fine with a 12’ overhang that was closed on the ends, and that was also shelter for the paddock & pastures. In the spring/summer/fall I just dealt with bedding blowing out the run doors when the horses were in, but all stall doors were closed to prevent loss when they were turned out.

The snow drifting was brutal, and we planted a wind break of Austree willows, which are very fast growing. I’m not sure if this is obvious–it sure wasn’t to me!–but wind breaks dump snow on the BACK side. If we’d stayed there longer, we would’ve also put a temporary wind break fence in the field across the street every winter to prevent snow from running down our perimeter fence & dumping at the gate.

Really DEEP run ins make a big difference in wind, and if your wind is schizophrenic, two sheds at right angles (touching in the corner, like an “L”) can provide better coverage.

You get used to it…eventually. I don’t miss that part of MN!

[StormyDay]

I live in an area that can be windy in the winter, but usually not too bad.
Except when I moved up here. I was in a rental on the side of a hill in a valley and holy cow I’d never felt wind like that before. If the town was having 25mph winds we were having 80mph winds. It was like living in a constant hurricane.

Part of the property had a line of pine trees and the wind was significantly less behind them. If I had stayed longer I would have planted a wind break the whole length of the property.

Also, if like with this property you have it blowing from one direction all the time, make sure you don’t place your buildings length wise at the wind. It can create really bad wind tunnels on the sides of the building. One neighbor had their barn length wise to the wind and it was downright dangerous to be around it on some days. Plus it creaked and moaned inside the building. Another neighbor had it so the narrow end faced into the wind, and her barn was quieter inside and had less wind tunnel effect. She just made sure she had a really good barn door that didn’t allow in any wind at all.

I’m lucky my new place does not have that problem, but I do feel for you!

[clanter]

@Texarkana

Any strategies for planting trees or hedges as windbreaks? What are the best placements?

I am in the Fort Worth area, the prevailing winter winds here are from northwest to north. We put in a wind breaks of trees 36 years ago… it has grown to about forty-five feet high providing a large wind free area where the horses can stand or lay in the sun. Most often they are eating hay during there on the cold windy winters days.

The shadows of the trees are our biggest issue as the horses will disappear standing there.

Temporary wind breaks …we installed sun screening (shade cloth) on the round pen to break the wind.

[eightpondfarm]

i would have suggested Eastern Red Cedars as a windbreak…until yesterday morning. Woke up early to review the farm after severe thunderstorm during the night. Several HUGE like 50-80ft mature cedars had their tops broken off! One almost took out the corner of our cemetary wall. So, until they become giants… Cedar trees are remarkable windbreaks. They grow easily, quickly…are dense. Birds love their seeds (and scatter them all over the place…you’ll be mowing little cedar sprouts in your yard in no time).

[Texarkana]

@Scribbler How interesting about the lilac hedges. How far would you say they were from the house? I’m curious just how far out the wind protection lasts from a hedgerow like that. Would of have to be right next to the house/buildings, or could it be farther back?

@Simkie Thanks for the willow recommendation, and the info on snow dumping. I wouldn’t have thought about that. Do you think N/S was a good orientation for the barn or would you have rather it been E/W if it had been your choice?

@StormyDay When you say lengthwise, do you mean perpendicular to the prevailing wind? I would have thought that would have been better, not worse. Interesting info.

@clanter Those sunscreens look great but I think our wind would destroy them in hours. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced living in other places!

@eightpondfarm We currently have a lot of volunteer eastern red cedar along the property line, but it’s sparse and scrubby. It is a good option for around here.

I’m going to add some more info in another post…

[Simkie]

@Texarkana

Do you think N/S was a good orientation for the barn or would you have rather it been E/W if it had been your choice?

N/S worked well–it caught the breeze in summer really nicely. In winter, we kept the big doors shut. Because they were sliders, they regularly froze to the ground, which sucked a lot, but that wasn’t really a wind thing, and you probably won’t face that where you are?

I 100% would have built the barn with all the stalls on the east side, though, rather than two on the east and two on the west. That would’ve been great with the nice deep overhang, and I could’ve kept all the runs open all winter. It also would’ve kept wind from scouring through the stalls via the run doors across the barn. All the storage stuff could have gone on the west side instead.

[Texarkana]

Hopefully my bad drawing with my fat finger doesn’t trigger everyone’s OCD too badly.

The red arrow in the up R corner is pointing north. The poorly drawn yellow line is just beyond the property line, the road makes up the northern boundary.

This is an old satellite photo and every single barn/shed/outbuilding you see was stolen by the sellers. We have a temporary shelter in one field and the remaining barn is in the satellite photo but you can’t really see it for the trees.

You can see there is vegetation on all sides of the property. The northern boundary has hedges of some type that must not have been in place yet when that photo was taken. The eastern boundary has native hardwoods (oak/maple/sweet gum). The southern boundary has mostly scrubby volunteer vegetation: cedar, mulberry, willow, multi flora rose, etc. The southwest has a thick stand of pine trees, then a mix of cedar, arborvitae, and volunteer vegetation.

The wind predominately comes from north and south, but comes from all directions fairly regularly. I would face any sheds east since that is the least frequent. There is almost always a constant 10mph wind, and it’s often much greater. Did I mention it’s constant? It is rare for it to stop or be less. Sometimes around midnight it stops.

So my question: where is the best place to plant natural windbreaks for the horses?

[StormyDay]

Yeah. In normal wind situations it doesn’t matter as much and usually the recommendation is to have your largest flat side of the building face the winter wind direction so that it doesn’t whistle up your barn isle.

But in really high wind situations, it’s actually better to do the opposite to try to streamline your buildings as much as possible.

If you take a shoe box and blow a table fan at it at high speed, you can kind of see (or rather, feel) what I’m talking about. The large flat surface will cause strange wind patterns around the box (and might even blow it away). Turn it so the end is facing to the wind, and you won’t have as many problems.

In real life, it translated to the one barn having a wind tunnel effect on the short sides, a strange down-current on the non-wind facing side, and terrible buffeting on the flat side facing into the wind.

[eightpondfarm]

So, i would put a solid long wall of ? (cedars) to the north and longish, random natural looking clusters of evergreen whatnots (whatever else grows well there) interspersed with cedars to both the south and west. If you leave the eastern side open your barn will get nice sunlight first thing in the morning in the wintertime. In the pasture, you’ll need to fence them until they gain height…so for about 5-7 years or so. I’d start them about 200 ft or so away from your structures

[clanter]

@Texarkana

Those sunscreens look great but I think our wind would destroy them in hours. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced living in other places!

the ones we have are actually came from a high school baseball diamond that were replaced with new, these are the thrown away castoffs we got for free… eight years ago.

it is not uncommon for us to have sustained wind in the forty mph range for days at a time with gusts beyond 65/70 mph. Admittedly the round pen is downwind from the treeline wind break so I would expect it to benefit some for the treeline breaking some of the force.

regarding using cedar trees, you might verify your horses’ tolerance to cedar pollen… I know cedar pollen is an issue with several of our kids

[Texarkana]

@clanter

@Texarkana

Those sunscreens look great but I think our wind would destroy them in hours. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced living in other places!

the ones we have are actually came from a high school baseball diamond that were replaced with new, these are the thrown away castoffs we got for free… eight years ago.

it is not uncommon for us to have sustained wind in the forty mph range for days at a time with gusts beyond 65/70 mph. Admittedly the round pen is downwind from the treeline wind break so I would expect it to benefit some for the treeline breaking some of the force.

I say 10mph because that’s what the weather app says. I don’t think it’s accurate. We have a weather station we haven’t set up yet and I’m dying to see what says. I didn’t think 10-20mph was strong before living here. Yesterday the wind blew my cell phone out of my hand and across the pasture. It wasn’t a gust, just the normal constant wind. Cell phone flying through the air as if it was a leaf. That has never happened to me before. The weather app says it was “only” 16mph wind.

[clanter]

@Texarkana

I didn’t think 10-20mph was strong before living here.

well would I disagree, I sold my service company after bring called out at 2AM to repair a access control gate system on an oil terminal on a January morning when it was 15F with a 15 mph wind out of the north … the wind nearly killed me, so I thought

[Simkie]

Something else to consider is just putting up a couple wind breaks at different orientations–basically just wood walls that the horses can choose to stand behind on whichever side depending on where the wind is coming from.

My horses never minded the wind much outside of winter, they were happy to graze in it. I was surprised at how bothersome flies could still be in that “blow your phone out of your hand” strength wind

[Texarkana]

Today we have a wind advisory for the region. We have had a lot of those this winter. My app says it’s 24 mph right now. Looking out my window, every tree is swaying. Not just the branches, the entire trees. It is hard to walk in the gusts. Earlier today my kid got blown over.

Looking at this, that would put the winds more in the 31-38 mph category.

https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/winds

Going by their chart, I guess we have a near-constant “fresh breeze.” Limbs and small trees are almost always moving. But that doesn’t make sense because there is a small airport behind me and I think a lot of their activities wouldn’t be happening in wind that strong. Unfortunately they don’t have any online weather data.

[Texarkana]

@Simkie

Something else to consider is just putting up a couple wind breaks at different orientations–basically just wood walls that the horses can choose to stand behind on whichever side depending on where the wind is coming from.

My horses never minded the wind much outside of winter, they were happy to graze in it. I was surprised at how bothersome flies could still be in that “blow your phone out of your hand” strength wind

I’ve thought about putting up walls. Several farms around here have walls about 10+ft from the entrance of their 3 sided sheds. I had never seen that before but I’m understanding why…

I’m surprised your horses didn’t care. Mine HATE it. They will stand out in all sorts of precipitation but wind sends them running for shelter, even when the weather is beautiful.

[Texarkana]

@eightpondfarm

So, i would put a solid long wall of ? (cedars) to the north and longish, random natural looking clusters of evergreen whatnots (whatever else grows well there) interspersed with cedars to both the south and west. If you leave the eastern side open your barn will get nice sunlight first thing in the morning in the wintertime. In the pasture, you’ll need to fence them until they gain height…so for about 5-7 years or so. I’d start them about 200 ft or so away from your structures

Is 200ft away really enough to break the wind? It seems like it would need to be much closer. What is here now is 200ft away and it does nothing. The property is not very big (just under 11 acres) and only about 450ft wide.

[eightpondfarm]

when they grow large enough, sure. I’ve planted a double row of pines (loblolly/pitch loblolly and norfolks) and eastern red cedars on the N side of a large pasture which are now all about 8’ tall. I expect that in a few years they’ll provide enough of a break to veer up the wind for at least 200 feet of that area. Not sure though…
Of COURSE you can plant as close as you want. Cedars transplant really really easily. You can pull up the little ones (12" or so) by hand right after a rain! I recently transplanted about 50 of them for a hedge and only maybe 8 or 10 didn’t make it. And, easy enough to kill them if you don’t like them where they are…just have to brushhog them down a few times and they give up.

[Simkie]

@Texarkana

I’m surprised your horses didn’t care. Mine HATE it. They will stand out in all sorts of precipitation but wind sends them running for shelter, even when the weather is beautiful.

Aww, poor guys I hope they get more used to it.

Mine have always been housed with wind, so it was just more of the same in MN. The lack of wind here in CT is pretty novel. Now the issue is the trees that come crashing down when the wind does come!