The wind shadow is estimated by assuming that the wind bends downward no more than a fixed inflection angle from the horizontal as it passes over a height of land. The effects of topographic features beyond the margins of the input elevation map are of course not predicted by the model. For a given landscape and wind direction, predicted protected areas decrease in size as the inflection angle increases. Application of the model in studies of two recent hurricanes suggests that the probability of wind damage in protected areas also decreases as the inflection angle increases. An inflection angle of about 5 to 10 degrees was found to give good results.
Hurricane impacts to tropical and temperate forest landscapes.
Additional information is contained in the documentation that accompanies the program.