Published June 21, 2010

She calls it the AirDo. (Amancay Maahs/Flickr)

First of all, I think it’s funny that people argue about Chicago’s well-known nickname as though it’s “Windiest City.” But I’ve lived in windier places! they cry.

Chicago is a windy city. Have you ever been to downtown Chicago, in the winter, when those winds from Lake Michigan blow through the skyscrapers? Your bones hurt. Chicago is windy. No one is saying it’s the windiest city in America.

This is a debate we provoked with Adam Ragusea’s piece today on Radio Boston.

So what is the windiest city? It’s not Boston, although Boston is windier than Chicago, depending how you slice the data. According to NOAA’s recordings of average wind speed over many decades in 275 U.S. locations, Boston’s average wind speed in a given year is 12.4 miles per hour. Chicago’s? 10.3 MPH.

The mad scientist in Adam’s story, MIT’s Alex Kalmikov, summed it up neatly: “Chicago is less windy than Boston.” I know, it can be hard to believe. Of course, windiness can be measured in different ways and in different places. As Adam points out, weather in Chicago and Boston is observed at the airports — and as George Carlin used to say, No one lives at the airport.

Sorry, I’m getting long-winded. You really ought to listen to Adam’s story to get a sense of how tricky this can be.

Now, what is the windiest place on record? St. Paul Island, Alaska. But that’s not fair. It’s Alaska. The windiest place in the lower 48 states? The observatory on Great Blue Hill, which clocks in at a whopping 15.3 MPH. The windiest place in (contiguous) America. Right there in Milton.

Worcester clocks in at 10.3 MPH, the same as Chicago. I think it’s safe to say Massachusetts is among the windiest states in the union.

As for the origin of that nickname, “The Windy City,” I don’t want to go there. Many callers and commenters said — insisted! — that the phrase refers to bloviating politicians, not weather phenomena. But that just happens to be the most popular myth. The truth is that linguists have never arrived at consensus on the origin.

Update: Well, color me embarrassed. Elizabeth correctly points out in the comments that Mt. Washington in New Hampshire is way, way windier, at 35.1 MPH average. That said, I think that data point is an outlier, as I doubt many people live atop Mt. Washington. And hey, at least New England still gets the distinction!