This Weather Better Get Better!!!

I love the word anemometer. :)

^^^ The Iron Boogers would make a good name for a punk band.

I could very well be wrong. I was basing the headwind assumption on the observation I made when I was there once on a fairly windy day. They tried to launch Dragster, but it wouldn't clear the hill. Looking at the weather history for the day, it looks like the sustained wind at that point was about 25-28 MPH out of the SW, which does put it below the 30 MPH limit.

DRose said:

CPboy77 said:
Oh ok, never saw that thread. When was this when it snowed?

We got hit with some sleet the last Saturday of the season in 2001.

That is why I only like going to Cedar Point during the summer. It's just more fun when it's warm rather than having it cold.

^^
That 25-28 mph most likely wasn't at 420 feet in the air.

Try visiting PA! Yesterday's high in Hershey was a sweltering 41 degrees...so of course in the morning I rode Storm Runner in the snow. It was shut down for a large portion of the day. The kid at the entrance said it was because of the cold...so it was kind of confusing that they were able to open the ride in the early evening, when I'm sure the temperature was dropping. Does TTD have problems in the cold? I don't know much about the mechanics of the launch system, or how they compare to Storm Runner.

Same type launch, just different size motors.

The wind is a main contributing factor to Dragster due to the obvious height.

Loopy said:
^^
That 25-28 mph most likely wasn't at 420 feet in the air.

I think the wind speed is from the Lorain airport, and I don't know how high the airports put thier anemometer, but I agree that I don't think they put them at 400+ feet in the air.

Just know that the winds are a tad bit more drastic at those heights.:)
As for SR, I'm not surprised. Really cold weather makes running a hydraulic coaster hard. Rollbacks are more of an occurrence as well since the track is cold and is hard to warm up. But at 41°, it should have been fine after a while. Closing weekend (and the weekend before that) saw almost the same temps and Dragster, though having difficulty, ran fairly well. Aside from the slow loading times and agonizing wait to fill up more rows....it ran fine.

SR was only running one train, so one entire side of the station was closed. Because of this, there was no issue filling up the rows. The only time it had to sit for a while without running was before our last ride of the night, when some kid got a bloody nose and they had to bring in the medics to clean the seats behind where he was. Thank goodness the kid was in the back, I can't imagine how long it would have taken if they would have had to clean the entire car. It sat for about 15 minutes, and after we were loaded I overheard the operator say something about "it's cold, maybe we should launch one first." I was expecting them to tell us to get back out and they would lauch an empty one, but they didn't.

^
I am aware that wind speeds vary with hight. Atmospheric sciencies was one of the options I considered for my BS degree. Unfortunately, the historical data for the wind speed at the top of Dragster is a little harder to find than near the ground.

True.....

Looking back, it is possible to estimate the wind speed as height increases. The wind speed at the crest of Draster is probabbly about 50% faster than at the ground level. (This is just a rough calculation)

Anyway, this weekend I saw the sure sign that it is almost spring. The orange barrels lineing the Michigan freeways.

It seems to me it's probably a lot more complicated than that. Who says it has to be 50% faster? Maybe it could be dead calm on the ground, and blowing at 30 mph at 400 feet.

What we need is a good meteorologist to straighten the matter out. Hmmm. Any on the site? ;)

Well I took summer meteorology classes in Louisiana and know a few meteorologists so maybe I can help. Wind speeds vary at altitudes but not based specifically on altitude. As height increases, windspeeds increase in the northern half of the world and become somewhat more westerly. Dragster would intersect with a low level jet stream if it is over the area at the time. this occurs usually between 125 and 350 feet. The variance of temperature also affects the speed. Also weather conditions can affect it. If the sky is clear , the wind speed will vary less between ground level and the top of TTD, but if there is a low pressure system around, the winds will vary greater cause of the pressures changing, usually happening before the storm hits when moving in from the north or west.

Without going into the math:
There is an equation that can be used to estimate wind speeds at different altitudes, by knowing the wind speed at a given altitude. The ground resists the flow of the air over it. The farther you are from the ground, the less influence the ground has on the air flow, and the faster the wind can go. With a fairly simple equation, you can approximate the wind speeds at different altitudes.

haha, i saw what you put before...with the math. If combine what you said and what I said, its correct.

Cleavland.....14 inch of snow?

This is just crazy. And to think, Kings island opens in 2 weeks.

I heard Sandusky got 6, god I hate cold weather.

I was at Six Flags Great Adventure today and it was actually snowing out! It was about 38 degrees and it wasn't snowing too bad so it didn't effect my lineless day. There was only 500 people in the park.