High Plains residents are intimately familiar with wind. A recent Weather.com post listedAmarillo, Texas, as the windiest city in the US. Some High Plains communities have discovered how to harness the wind’s power. For example, after Greensburg, Kansas, was destroyed by a tornado in 2007, residents rebuilt the town as a green energy paradise. Its wind now generates three times more power than the town uses.
But even though the High Plains is a perpetual wind machine, there are places on earth that are even windier. The Guardianrecently posted an article on New Zealand’s capital of Wellington—the world’s windiest city. Wellington’s harbor features a sculpture of a man leaning off the dock into the powerful winds that powers uninterrupted into the city from South America, thousands of miles to the west.
St John’s, on the eastern coast of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, is North America’s windiest city, with winds averaging between 13 and 15mph.