You’ve heard of the “polar vortex.” Well, now there’s a new threat swirling across the skies–the “circular vortex.”
A new study out of the University of Kansas reveals that windmills create air turbulence that can extend to a range of up to three miles, posing a danger to small aircraft.
Industrial-size turbines, commonly used to generate wind energy, can create what researchers describe as a “circular vortex”–a type of wind disturbance that is particularly dangerous to pilots.
The study, described as the first of its kind, also showed that wind turbines can propel crosswinds at speeds higher than pilots might normally anticipate.
“We’re really looking at two potential threats,” said Tom Mulinazzi, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at KU, in an interview with The Topeka Capital-Journal.
“We felt like the study was worthwhile, especially with the boom in wind farms and wind farm proposals in Kansas,” he said.
According to the Capital-Journal, researchers embarked on the study after Kansas Department of Transportation received complaints from pilots who experienced unexpected turbulence when taking off or landing at airports near wind farms.
The largest wind turbans can reach 400 feet tall with blades moving at speeds in excess of 150 miles per hour.
Just imagine, you hop in a little prop plane to do some crop dusting, next thing you know an industrial wind farm three miles away is flipping your plane over with a turbine-powered vortex.
And all this time you thought killing millions of bats and endangered birds every year was the biggest downside to wind energy.
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