Eli5: If heat is energy, how does cold wind exist? How can air move (have cold gusts of wind) if it’s not hot? Where does the energy for movement of cold air come from?

Question

I asked this in school and the teacher thought I was trolling and didn’t answer me. It’s been like 20 years and I still think about it, it drives me crazy lol.

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

The speed of air molecules is about 500m/s at room temperature, that’s over 1000mph. Colder air isn’t that different as the speed scale with the square root of temperature (in K). You don’t feel it because the direction is random for each individual molecule, so the total average, or collective speed is zero. 

Wind refers to the collective speed, and rarely go over 100 mph (or you won’t survive anyway over that). So it’s really make very little difference in our daily life. But if the “wind” is strong enough, yes you do heat up on the surface blocking the air, but we call that air resistance/ friction.