page_title: Prevailing winds
section_title: Wind rose
hierarchical_section_title: Prevailing winds / Wind rose
caption_attribution_description: Wind rose plot, Station #83193, Fresno Air Terminal, Fresno, California
context_page_description: The prevailing wind in a region of the Earth's surface is a surface wind that blows predominantly from a particular direction. The dominant winds are the trends in direction of wind with the highest speed over a particular point on the Earth's surface. A region's prevailing and dominant winds are the result of global patterns of movement in the Earth's atmosphere. In general, winds are predominantly easterly at low latitudes globally. In the mid-latitudes, westerly winds are dominant, and their strength is largely determined by the polar cyclone. In areas where winds tend to be light, the sea breeze/land breeze cycle is the most important cause of the prevailing wind; in areas which have variable terrain, mountain and valley breezes dominate the wind pattern. Highly elevated surfaces can induce a thermal low, which then augments the environmental wind flow
  Wind roses are tools used to display the direction of the prevailing wind. Knowledge of the prevailing wind allows the development of prevention strategies for wind erosion of agricultural land, such as across the Great Plains.
context_section_description: A wind rose is a graphic tool used by meteorologists to give a succinct view of how wind speed and direction are typically distributed at a particular location.  Presented in a polar coordinate grid, the wind rose shows the frequency of winds blowing from particular directions.  The length of each spoke around the circle is related to the proportion of the time that the wind blows from each direction. Each concentric circle represents a different proportion, increasing outwards from zero at the center. A wind rose plot may contain additional information, in that each spoke is broken down into color-coded bands that show wind direction ranges. Wind roses typically show 8 or 16 cardinal directions, such as north (N), NNE, NE, etc., although they may be subdivided into as many as 32 directions.
caption: Wind rose plot for Fresno Air Terminal (FAT), Fresno, California for the month of April 1961
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