"Is this the windiest April on record for the state? It sure seems like it as I can not remember a windier period during all the years I have lived here!" These thoughts are rather common among Iowans and other mid-westerners this April. The need to rank things is seemingly natural, but is there data to answer this question? Unlike temperatures, which are a bit more straight forward to measure and have long term and reliable records, the archive of wind information is problematic, to say the least. Documented and some undocumented changes in observation techniques, recording heights and reporting intervals make long term comparisons very tricky. The featured chart presents such data for Des Moines and this April comes in just at the long term average, gasp, how could that be? Well, you can see the dominance of higher values during the first 30 years of the period of record, which pull the long term average up. Was it really windier back then or is this a result of changes in observation? Sadly, it is difficult to say and likely a further source of the general public when asking simple questions and getting long winded responses like this one from meteorologists! If you set aside the early data and just focus on the past 30 years or so, this year doesn't necessarily stand out and is still behind other recent years. Having it be extra windy during the already windiest month likely adds to a bit of hyperbole present most every April.

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