Why do some winds blow constantly, and some blow almost exclusively in gusts? What creates gusts? I know how wind is “made”, but how do gusts happen? If it’s the same thing, just on a smaller scale, wouldn’t it be like that all the time, and not depend on the direction of the wind?
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Air wants to move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, caused by things like warm air rising up and colder air flowing in to occupy that space.
In a perfect, unchanging system this would happen at a constant speed. The thing is that we don’t live on a perfect, unchanging planet.
So the pressure differences and wind speed will vary depending on which areas are being heated or cooled and by how much – one day it may be really sunny and warm in one place and there will be a lot of air movement in that direction, the next it may be cloudy there but sunny elsewhere and the air patterns will change. Some days stronger, since weaker and so on. Because of this all the air is constantly moving direction and speed.
Alongside this the landscape also has a massive effect. Take a smooth flow of air and place a wall in the way. The air will start to build up behind the wall where it gets blocked and the pressure will rise until it is high enough to push the flow of air over the wall out of the way and release itself, at which point it will start to build up again. This means on the far side of the wall you will no longer get a smooth flow of air, but a flow that pulses along with the build-up and release of the air behind the way.
Repeat this with every mountain, valley and geological feature, not to mention any man made our natural objects like buildings and forests and add in the fact that the air is always changing as noted above too, and the nicer smooth airflow gets broken up into constantly changing and gusting winds.
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