Wind speed key issue on height of new bridges to AMI

Kudos to Billie Martini for her Feb. 10 letter concerning low bridges to the islands being best for public safety. I am a fifth-generation local with a college major in meteorology and rather extensive experience in both oceans regarding hurricanes and typhoons.

I was "there" just off the coast of Japan in early 1945 when one broke 200 feet from the bow of a heavy cruiser and ripped loose more than 100 feet of the flight deck's bow of the carrier USS Hornet.

In the early 1990s the head of NOAA's Hurricane Center in Miami presented me with a book containing the history of every Atlantic hurricane since the 1880s. The officially recognized Wyoming Wind Studies conclude that normal automobiles become endangered at broadside winds of 42 mph while high-profile ones start at 38 mph.

Our two bridge beds are 29 and 31 feet. There exists a nearly solid wall of structures along the Gulf side of Anna Maria Island to a code height just above the mid-30s. Hence, "ground effect" from that protection would demote winds of a passing hurricane to just below 30 mph, allowing safe passage across the spans to the mainland.

Mrs. Martini is very correct in that on a 65-foot-high bridge, the winds would greatly exceed the wind speeds from the studies above.

Jim Kissick

Bradenton Beach

This story was originally published February 21, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Wind speed key issue on height of new bridges to AMI ."