Wind gusts and peak winds
The way the maximum wind speed is represented in the Synoptic mesonet dataset offers some important considerations. Because different providers, and different sensors, use different methods to define a wind gust - Synoptic does not maintain a single “rule” for what is a wind gust.
Depending on your level of precision, wind gust and peak wind speed can be used interchangeably. Some stations will report both - and the interpretation will be dependent on the design of the station and mesonet.
Wind Gust
As stated, we have no rule, but the conventional description of a wind gust is as follows:
A gust is the maximum instantaneous wind observation made during a period of time, and represents variability of the wind at a time.
The main variables for a wind gust are
wind_gust- the maximum wind speed associated with an observation based on the conventions of the mesonetwind_gust_timewhich is used when the time of the gust does not correspond to the reporting timestamp of the observation
There is no direction associated with a wind gust. Convention, again, would dictate that the prevailing wind direction (wind_direction) at the time of the gust can be considered the direction of the gust, but this is not generally reported.
Depending on the choices made by the data provider, a gust can represent a single maximum or some other accounting for maximum, similar to a peak wind.
One major convention is the METAR convention - which defines a gust as the maximum instantaneous wind sample where the difference between the maximum and minimum is at least 10 knots. In this case, the gust is an indicator of both an extreme, but of variability or turbulence at the sampling location. Therefore there may be a peak wind of 5-6kts above the mean, but that may not meet the definition of a METAR gust, and not be reported. This convention depends on unreported sample distribution information, and cannot be implemented outside the METAR sensor.
Peak Wind
Peak wind, similarly, defines the maximum wind speed as reported by the station, but without any of the conventional stipulations of a wind gust. Meaning that a peak wind may have a direction, and additional statistics.
Variables for peak wind are as follows
peak_wind_speed- the velocitypeak_wind_direction- a direction associated with the reported wind
Synoptic can utilize our variable dimension system to add metadata such as the statistic (maximum, in this case) and evaluation period context to a peak wind observation. This is not common as of this writing (October 2025) but is a capacity we look forward to using further.
The variable dimension system noted here can also be used to represent the maximum statistic and evaluation period for a wind_speed variable, so there may be changes in the future to how we support the peak_wind variable at all.