Your sitting watching a scary movie. Then you hear a loud Whooooo! You think it is a banshee, ghost, or zombie. There is nothing to worry about it is probably the wind. If you want to know if it is the wind, stick your head out the window to see if there is a breeze. If you don’t fell a breeze the wind must of stopped suddenly.

     It is not simply a single feature of the weather, such as sunshine or sleet. Rather it is largely responsible for all weather changes. It may produce clouds that veil from us the sun by day and the stars by night. It can bring snow, rain, hail, droughts, or floods.

     The sun’s rays do not heat the air very much as they pass through it on their way to the surface of the earth. The air is warmed chiefly by the heat that is back from land and sea. Air circulations also brought about in effects of gravitation upon air masses depend upon the degree to which these masses have been heated.  

     What is the effect on land and water areas? The actual circulation of air is not nearly so simple as this description would make it appear. It is true that in many areas there is a general drift toward the poles in the upper air and a general drift toward the equator at the surface.

     Mountains, hills, trees, buildings, and other irregularities, natural

 and man-made upon the earth’s surface, also effect the circulation all the air. On a more or less level plain, where such obstructions are fewest, the winds sweep across the surface of the earth with the greatest regularity. Within a big city, with its innumerable buildings of different heights, the force of the winds is broken and there are many eddies. The higher above the earth’s surface the winds are, the less they are affected by the features of the landscape.

     These are areas where the winds follow the same general direction for months at a time. These belts are the doldrums, the trades and antitrades, the horse latitudes, the westerlies, and the polar winds