isn't much on the Wondervue scale. Wondervue is a town in the foothills (pronounced foo-thills by some) west of Boulder, Colorado.

The anemometer is a twenty-four foot (7 meters plus) tall steel pole set into bedrock. There's a big ring at the top of the pole that holds a logging chain. By town ordinance each link on the chain has to weigh 1 pound (ca 500 g.)

If that chain isn't moving the locals start heading further up the mountain because they consider the air so still that breathing's impossible.

They start to get comfortable when the bottom part of the chain is wagging back and forth.

When the chain stands out from the pole at a 45 degree angle they break out the kites.

But the kites come down when the chain stands straight out from the pole, and when the links start snapping off the end of the chain they admit that it's starting to get a might breezy.

One old timer still talks about the time the wind whipped off all the links and then bent the pole right over flat but most of the locals think he might tend to exaggerate just a bit and they say the pole only bent about 60 degrees from vertical.


TEd