This March was the windiest on record
March is typically the windiest spring month for most of the nation but wind gusts and wind advisories broke records over a wide area in 2025.
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Does it seem like it was unusually windy last month? You're not wrong. This March came in like a lion -- but the lion never left. Even though it is typically the windiest month of the spring, this March was the windiest on record in many U.S. cities and in the nation at large.
NOAA says that the average sustained wind speed was above historical average over most of the nation. The exceptions were northern South Dakota, southern Texas, and southern Florida. The highest anomalies compared to historical average, shown in dark orange on the map, were 1.6 to 2.4 mph (1 to 1.5 m/s) above that historical average. While that may not sound like much, the map's scale only goes from -4.8 to +4.8 mph (-3 to +3 m/s).
In addition, AccuWeather meteorologists found that almost every major city east of the Rockies ranked first or second for the highest average wind gusts for March.
Almost every major city had windiest March
Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Little Rock, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Chicago broke their previous average wind gust record for March by a significant margin of 1 mph or more. Indianapolis was the windiest of the windy cities, breaking the previous average wind gust record of 33.69 mph in 2022 by 1.51 mph with a reading of 35.20 mph.
Washington, D.C., New York City, Raleigh, Miami, New Orleans, Amarillo, Dallas, Minneapolis, and Sioux Falls were also ranked the number one windiest March. Boston, Jackson, and Corpus Christi were number two.
Records for these cities go back 77 to 97 years ago, typically when the airports were built.
More wind damage than ever
Over 1,500 reports of wind damage were submitted to the NWS during the month, far more than any previous March since records began in 1950. Most of these reports were east of the Rocky Mountains. A total of 44 wind gusts over 75 mph were also reported.
Record wind watches and warnings
Throughout March, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued 124 high wind watches and 164 high wind warnings, both records for any month since records began in the 1980s. On March 4, 2025, the NWS issued 33 high wind warnings, the second-most ever issued in a calendar day. March 14, 2025, marked the second-highest count of high wind watches issued in a calendar day by the NWS.
Several cities had near-record gusts
On March 14, Amarillo, Texas, recorded an 83-mph wind gust, which appears to be its highest on record since 1949, when a sustained wind of 81 mph was recorded. Lubbock also clocked winds up to 81 mph--the highest since 1976.
Across much of the central U.S. on March 14, extreme winds led to destructive wildfires, sun-blocking dust storms, massive pileups and worse.
On March 16, the weather station at Latrobe, Pennsylvania, gusted to 89 mph, the third highest gust at the station. Zanesville, Ohio, gusted to 76 mph the same day, its second-highest gust on record. Clarksburg, West Virginia, set a new all-time wind record of 71 mph on March 16. Record-keeping there began in 1974.
March is typically windy -- but not this much
For the West, Plains and Carolinas, March is typically the windiest of the three months in meteorological spring -- March, April, and May -- over the western two-thirds of the nation.
"The spring transition is a bit tough for the atmosphere to handle," Paul Pastelok, AccuWeather Lead Long-Range Expert explained. "The rising of the sun higher in the sky in March over the northern Hemisphere can create large temperature differences south to north, which then creates a strong gradient in pressure, which creates wind."
In March of 2025, unusual storminess over the northern Pacific, and unusual high pressure just north of Hawaii, came together to create a strong jet stream, pushing an unusual number of unusually powerful storms across the northern U.S. Each of those storms had high winds. La Nina also contributed to this pattern, Pastelok said.
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