Wind loads

[Graham W]

A roaring noise from the beginnings of Storm Ciara woke me up in the middle of the night.  I remember a learned discussion on this forum about the stresses and forces exerted by the wind increasing as a square of wind speed.  It was written back in 2011 and I couldn’t find it discussed in simple terms anywhere else by doing a Google search outside of this forum.

Has anyone drawn a simple chart illustrating for a non-mathematician like me how the formula works?  I’m in the south east of the UK and it may become increasingly relevant as the day wears on and the storm progresses!

[Sea Simon]

This site is quite useful, but bear n mind it includes many assumptions. No drag/eddies/interaction effects, immovable object etc, which are unlikely to be entirely relevant to us?
Perhaps confirms your simple indicator, wind  force is related to square of wind speed?

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wind-load-d_1775.html

And for Beaufort scale in m/s, met office is good...
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/guides/coast-and-sea/beaufort-scale

Also includes likely sea states.

[Graham W]

The data in the first link hits the simple spot!  If I’ve read it correctly, for every doubling of wind speed, the wind load quadruples.  So by tomorrow afternoon, according to our local forecast, the wind generated by Storm Dennis will feel (and probably sound) four times stronger than it does now.