High Wind — Watonwan, Minnesota

2021-12-15 to 2021-12-16 · Watonwan, Minnesota

Event narrative

The Minnesota Department of Highways has a wind sensor along the Watonwan, Blue Earth County line. This wind sensor measured several gusts above 50 mph from 1000 PM CST, to 200 AM CST, with a peak wind gust of 51 knots at 1105 PM.

Wider weather episode

A historic storm, with a severe weather outbreak of tornadoes that occurred across southern Minnesota, and into parts of western Wisconsin, continued to intensify and move northeast across Minnesota Wednesday night. A strong pressure gradient developed in response to the deepening low pressure and produced widespread wind gusts in excess of 50 mph for several hours late Wednesday night and into early Thursday morning. The highest wind gusts associated with the synoptic scale winds was the Redwood Falls airport that measured a wind gust of 78 mph at 11:30 PM. Wind speeds were not as strong across far western Minnesota near Canby, Appleton, Benson and Morris where wind speeds were less than 45 mph. In addition, farther to the north of the Twin Cities area, wind speeds over averaged between 30 and 45 mph, with only a couple of gusts above 50 mph.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 989986. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.