A comparison of wind prediction models for transitional flow regimes using full-scale hurricane data

Observations of high-resolution wind speed data from two US Atlantic Coast hurricanes are used to compare several models for evaluating the effect a terrain change on the mean and gust wind speeds at 10 m height. The results indicate that these models tend to overestimate the increase in speed at 10 m height induced by a transition from a rougher to a smoother terrain. This is conservative for design purposes, but may be unnecessarily so.