Wind Calculator
Wind speed is the speed of movement of air relative to a fixed point on the earth. It usually means the movement of air in an outside environment, but the speed of movement of air inside is important in many areas, including weather forecasting, aircraft and maritime operations, building and civil engineering. High wind speeds can cause unpleasant side effects, and strong winds often have special names, including gales, hurricanes, and typhoons. See the Beaufort scale for a discussion of this.
Wind speed is the speed of movement of air relative to a fixed point on the Earth.
Measuring Windspeed
Wind speed may be measured by a variety of tools. The anemometer, consisting of a rotating vane, has been the most common method of measuring speeds close to the ground for hundreds of years. The can fix his position relative to the ground and knowing from instruments his movement through the air can estimate the wind speed and direction over the time he has been flying. Such reports can be used to confirm wind speed forecasts. The development of accurate electronic navigation systems, including inertial navigation and GPS enable this calculation to be done automatically. Modern GPS and inertial systems often include a direct readout of the current windspeed and direction.
Speed and Velocity
Technically Wind speed is given by
where u, v, and w are zonal, meridional, and vertical components of wind velocity. Except in unusual circumstances (e.g. in cumulus updrafts), the vertical component of the velocity is much smaller than the horizontal component.
Coordinate Converter
This form will try to read whatever you enter and convert it to three formats: decimal degrees, degrees-minutes, and degrees-minutes-seconds.
Calculate the great circle distance between two points
This calculator will find the distance between two pairs of coordinates to a very high degree of precision (using the thoroughly nasty Vincenty Formula, which accounts for the flattened shape of the earth). The "Draw map" button will show you the two points on a map and draw the great circle route between them.
Calculate the distance between two addresses
This calculator will find the straight-line distance between two locations of any kind: street addresses, city names, ZIP codes, etc. (The coordinates of the locations are provided by the Google Geocoding API.) NOTE: If you just need to coordinates of an address, use the geocoding utilities.
Draw a direct route between airports
This form will simply show you two airports -- represented by a 3-letter IATA code or 4-letter ICAO code -- on a map, along with a line representing the shortest route between them.
Draw routes between multiple airports
In the form below, you can enter a list of routes (airport pairs) separated by commas to see all of them on a single map. For example: PDX-MSP,BOS-MIA,ATL-DEN,DEN-PHX
Draw range rings around a point
This form will plot a point on a map -- given a set of coordinates or a "location" (an airport code, ZIP code, city/state pair, street address, or coordinate pair) -- and draw a circle, or circles, around that point. To create multiple rings, separate the values in the "radius" box with commas: e.g., "10mi,50mi,100mi."
To include these "range rings" in a map with your own tracks, click the "Show coordinates" button and save the resulting text file. Then upload that file to the
map form along with your other data.