Trails of Wind: The architecture of airport runways
August 21, 2019 8:07 AM   Subscribe

 
Hm. I kinda feel like this choice of colors is maybe making the secondary directions vanish, they all just merge into 'yellow-green' or 'blue-green' for me. I can't read any comments they may have about the methodology of this project because the text on the left refuses to scroll for me.
posted by egypturnash at 8:14 AM on August 21, 2019


This is neat - I'd love to marry this with the current flight data from FlightRadar24 or similar. I'd never really thought too much about runway layouts till one of my kids become airplane mad, and we ended up laying out SFO's runways in masking tape on the living room floor (frequent short haul flyers on 1L and R represent!). Something I didn't appreciate is just how much chaos climate change may make with layouts as changing temperatures and winds may impact how planes takeoff, or that shifting magnetic fields mean runways periodically need to be renumbered.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:51 AM on August 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


It was neat seeing this in action this weekend during the Chicago airshow. Because there was a big thunderstorm in the morning that delayed both the air show and a lot of flights to O'Hare when the air show did go on there was two air shows - the intended air show and the stacked inbound flights to O'Hare just slightly to the North that couldn't use the NorthWest-SouthEast runways because the show was in the air space they needed for the approach. There were easily 6 or more passenger jets visible at a time and they were heading West to the runways at very short intervals. It was like watching an airport time-lapse video. The number of East-West runways kind of explains how they could come in so close together.
posted by srboisvert at 9:24 AM on August 21, 2019


You can really see the change in prevailing wind directions over Europe and the north of the Indian subcontinent.

And what's going on in Michigan?

Nice map.
posted by Kiwi at 10:11 AM on August 21, 2019


As someone who manages a data viz group in the aviation industry, this is pretty cool. I won't get too nit-picky into some of the decisions they made, but I do really wish they would have actually included historic wind data as well (just to prove out their narrative), so I'll throw this wind viz out there.
posted by noneuclidean at 10:12 AM on August 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


Probably should have linked directly to the gallery since that wind viz is live, but you get the idea.
posted by noneuclidean at 10:17 AM on August 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


That wind viz is amazingly cool looking. The big circle in the midwest looks like a terrifying storm, but I'm not seeing anything super scary in the regular weather maps, other than Kansas City getting a bit of a storm right now.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:23 AM on August 21, 2019


That wind viz map is neat, but I remember seeing one a while back that was global in scale that was truly mesmerizing to look at.
posted by smcniven at 10:26 AM on August 21, 2019


smcniven: This global map might be what you're referring to. If you click where it says 'earth' in the lower left you'll see it can also show pollution, ocean currents, wave heights & periods, and lots of other info.
posted by theory at 10:39 AM on August 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


"The big circle in the midwest looks like a terrifying storm, but I'm not seeing anything super scary in the regular weather maps"

That's my cue to repost the Hairy Ball Theorem.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:41 AM on August 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Did the link just die, or is it just that I can't get to it somehow?
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:57 AM on August 21, 2019


The spike in the histogram showing the majority of runways aligned exactly N-S is interesting. It's extremely narrow, and it runs counter to my impression (pictures of the jet stream, &c) that winds blow more frequently E-W. Is it really true that those runways reflect a strong N-S bias in prevailing winds for many locations, or is it simply the case that humans arbitrarily pick N-S unless something forces another choice?

I suspect that this map really depicts a convolution of nature (not just wind but also landscape), the built environment (restricted airspace over sensitive areas, &c), and arbitrary human preferences. It would be interesting to see how often (and where) the runway alignment deviates from the average wind direction.
posted by Westringia F. at 11:10 AM on August 21, 2019


Is it really true that those runways reflect a strong N-S bias in prevailing winds for many locations, or is it simply the case that humans arbitrarily pick N-S unless something forces another choice?

Many airports are embedded in the grid system of the surrounding area (Phoenix, Dallas, Los Vegas come immediately to mind). That would prejudice the orientation of the runways to align with the grid.
posted by sjswitzer at 11:19 AM on August 21, 2019


I like that Pensacola, Florida, is clearly visible on this map; it's the bit of the Gulf Coast at the tip of the Florida panhandle that is really densely packed with many small, unmanned airports and landing strips. It's where the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps do their flight training so there are lots of strips in the area where the pilots practice (and I also assume they're there for safety reasons - give the new pilots many available emergency landing places).
posted by ElKevbo at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2019


that winds blow more frequently E-W. Is it really true that those runways reflect a strong N-S bias in prevailing winds for many locations

It really depends on where you are talking about in the US. The wind in Texas does blow primarily S->N which is why the center of the US is relatively fertile land and also very humid, and the wind carries water from the Gulf of Mexico north which crashes into storms coming south from Canada.

I believe the wind also blows generally N/S up the east coast as well.
The mountain west, Florida, and the mountain ranges in the mid-Atlantic cause the wind to blow more E-W than N/S. If they weren't there, the wind would probably blow mostly S-> N across the Gulf of Mexico there too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:55 AM on August 21, 2019


...the intended air show and the stacked inbound flights to O'Hare just slightly to the North that couldn't use the NorthWest-SouthEast runways because the show was in the air space they needed for the approach.

O'Hare has decomissioned the NW/SE runways 14R/32L (later known as 15/33) and 14L/32R. The traffic almost always flows east or west. 22L and 4L are sometimes used as departure runways, but I think it's extremely rare that 22R or 4R are used for arrivals. I've never personally seen it and I fly through O'Hare every 2-4 weeks.
posted by Quiscale at 12:32 PM on August 21, 2019


I love this, so cool. It's also one of the best relief maps I've seen.
posted by Acey at 1:25 PM on August 21, 2019


Very cool! My nitpick- visualization implies that runways run bidirectionally, which is obviously not the case. Maybe the dataset didn’t distinguish? I feel like identifying the primary direction would show even more wind influence.
posted by q*ben at 1:51 PM on August 21, 2019


And what's going on in Michigan?

Maybe to do with the lakes impacting wind patterns?
posted by Preserver at 2:01 PM on August 21, 2019


> And what's going on in Michigan?

IIRC, the prevailing wind from the west is due to being sandwiched between two lakes. And iirc YIP (which is primarily freight) and DTW airports have runways in other directions partly because DTW was built back in a day when there were only fields, rather than commercial and residential development, around it and could sprawl like crazy, and partly to provide approaches that didn't conflict with each other.

Note that when you zoom in close enough, the colored lines are replaced by white lines that represent actual runway length and direction. They don't always match up!
posted by at by at 2:03 PM on August 21, 2019


Gonna toot my own horn here with my Wind History project, unchanged from when I launched it on MeFi in 2011. It shows wind roses at airports, not runways, so is more directly visualizing wind. (click through for detailed reports at specific airports). It's not nearly as beautiful as this visualization here though. I am pleased my site is still working after 8 years; the joy of a site served entirely statically using relatively standard Javascript.
posted by Nelson at 2:28 PM on August 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


If you zoom in far enough it shows you every little crop-duster's runway at the back of his treeline, I found my childhood friend's dad's runway pretty easily, but I was surprised at how many others were within 10-20 miles of where I grew up. They're almost uniformly north-south out here, because of prevailing winds and the section-township-range layout of the upper midwest.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:36 PM on August 21, 2019


Nelson, that's awesome!

If I may ask -- where did you get the data, and do you mind sharing it? I'm tempted to do the circular statistics to look at the association between runway vs mean wind direction (and find outliers*), but wasn't sure where to get the data....

[* eg, KLAM breaks the pattern: the mean wind direction is to the south, but the runway goes to the east b/c the mesa it's on runs east-west; there wouldn't be room to land otherwise.]
posted by Westringia F. at 2:42 PM on August 21, 2019


The primary data source for Wind History is NOAA, but I ended up accessing it by buying a cleaned up copy of the archive on disc. I think the data is nominally free but I'm not sure you can download it in bulk easily. Probably possible with scraping.

You can get a highly processed version of the data directly out of the JSON on my site. (Averaged over time, binned to 10 or 30 degrees, etc.) MeMail me if you're serious and I can explain the format, etc.

Airport runway data is really easy to come by directly from the FAA. They used to make it available in a data dump product called FADDS but I'm not sure what the state of things is in 2019. You can also get runway data from OpenStreetMap.
posted by Nelson at 3:03 PM on August 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


"There were easily 6 or more passenger jets visible at a time and they were heading West to the runways at very short intervals. It was like watching an airport time-lapse video. The number of East-West runways kind of explains how they could come in so close together."

Although even on a normal day at O'Hare, planes land every 30 seconds! I live nearish the airport and when the flightpath is over our suburb we see a constant parade of planes, a new one appearing every 30 seconds as they stack up to land! You can easily see four landings as you get close to the airport on the Tri-State at 70 miles an hour, when you're on the two-mile straight that goes right under the most common landing path, they're so close together you'll always see 3 and usually four.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:04 PM on August 21, 2019


Nelson, I’ve never seen a wind rose before, but the diagram reminds me of Nightingale’s coxcomb plots. Thanks for sharing, everyone, these are some great graphics.
posted by eirias at 3:12 PM on August 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


> when you're on the two-mile straight that goes right under the most common landing path, they're so close together you'll always see 3 and usually four

You can see even more if you go to the lake due east of the airport (eg, on the Loyola campus) when the sky is dark and clear. The lights of all the planes queuing up on each of the parallel approaches look like strings of diamonds in the sky, stretching out over the lake. It's very beautiful.

Per Nelson's data, the winds at O'Hare are quite variable in their direction, though!
posted by Westringia F. at 3:35 PM on August 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


Nelson - interesting that there's that airport in Kosovo!
posted by jpziller at 3:58 AM on August 22, 2019


This is really neat, as is the wind history project and the hint.fm wind viz thing. I'd love to see the correlations. (Though, I'm not excited enough to figure out how to do it myself.)

I've always found it interesting that commercial aircraft pilots tell their passengers about the wind speed, direction, visibility, etc. It's simultaneously kind of neat, and also information that nobody except a pilot would ever care. Every time, I have the passing thought, "what am I supposed to do with a visibility distance? Re-schedule the order in which I visit panoramic landmarks?"

On the other hand, it's fun to get a little glimpse into the things pilots care about. I used to love the live communications stream audio channel, especially when I was a kid. Either it mostly doesn't exist now, or I haven't noticed it amid all the other things one can listen to these days.
posted by eotvos at 9:25 AM on August 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


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