After a destructive thunderstorm, with wind gusts measured at 131 mph, damages at a wind farm in Highmore, South Dakota, will now have to be cleaned up.
Pictures indicate that typical safety setbacks for wind turbines are more than adequate. Stories about blades sailing thru the air are Bullshit. All infrastructure will need to be hardened as climate extremes increase.
Mathew Cappucci in The Washington Post:
Something powerful just hit Hyde County, South Dakota.
A severe thunderstorm brought tornado-like wind speeds to the area in the predawn hours on Monday morning, which resulted in a 131-mph wind gust recorded in Holabird in Hyde County at 6:15 a.m. local time. The same storms produced a 112-mph gust at the Joe Creek Recreation Center in Hughes County, and a separate 114-mph gust was logged in Highmore in Hyde County. Then again at 6:44 a.m., another 112-mph gust occurred just north of Ree Heights in Hand County.
These may be the strongest straight-line thunderstorm gusts directly measured since Aug. 1, 1983, when a microburst hit Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland shortly after Air Force One landed with Ronald Reagan. A gust to 149.5 mph was clocked that day.