Ask A Scientist© Weather Archive

name         Walt
status       other
age          60s
Question -   In The United States we use miles per hour to measure 
wind velocity. In The Netherlands they use a numbering system. Can you 
relate the numbers to miles per hour?

Walt,

Actually, in the United States, scientists use meters per second (m/s) as 
the unit of wind speed.  This is often converted to miles per hour for the 
public.  m/s is what is used in all of the data from the Netherlands that 
I have seen.  By the way, the former director of KNMI (the Royal 
Netherlands Meteorological Institute) was one of my college professors.

David R. Cook
Atmospheric Section
Environmental Research Division
Argonne National Laboratory
=========================================================