Wild Winds Hit Western PA – Are Pittsburgh Storms Becoming More Windy?

Written by Tom Batroney
UpstreamPgh Board Member
Water Resources Engineer
May 2025

What a storm that was huh? I still can’t get over the power and destruction Mother Nature can bring with her storms. It was a day that many of us will remember for a long time. On the afternoon of April 29, 2025 the sky turned dark and then shortly thereafter came a wall of dangerous wind and rain. Reportedly 70+ miles per hour in some areas. Outside of my home a giant sycamore tree came crashing down onto my neighbors back deck and shattered all of the back windows. On its way down the tree took out the overhead electric and a transformer. Sparks flew as the power lines were ripped from the utility poles. Everything then went dark and we lit candles knowing it would be awhile before the power would be restored. It would be nine days before we could turn our lights back on.

Rainfall Animation of the April 29 Storm

The next day I walked the dog around Regent Square in awe of the damage. The scene looked similar to outside of my own home. Giant pin oaks were ripped from the tree lawns with the sidewalks upheaving. Another felled pin oak was laid across the bed of a flattened pickup truck. Another tree was lodged into a second story bedroom. Eventually they cut down the sycamore outside of my home that was laid across my neighbors deck. He counted 113 rings in the tree stump with a pencil, which dates the tree back to 1920, right around the time when Hampton Place, the neighborhood in which we live in Wilkinsburg, was laid out and established.

Image of the sycamore tree – note the 113 pencil mark in the upper left

 

As a water resources and stormwater engineer I frequently use historical weather data from airports to inform my projects. This is because airport data is typically the most accurate, reliable, and dates back the furthest in time. The Pittsburgh International Airport has been collecting hourly rainfall and weather data going all the way back to 1952. Weather stations at airports have highly sophisticated weather instrumentation to observe rainfall, snow accumulation, cloud cover, atmospheric pressure, and wind speeds. The best part? The data is freely accessible on the internet and anyone can download it and analyze it at their own leisure.

 

Image of a Typical Airport Weather Station

 

I was curious about the wind gusts we observed during the April 29th storm. Two questions I had: 1.) Are wind speeds during rain storms getting stronger? 2.) Are storms with high winds happening more frequently?

So to answer these questions I decided to download and analyze the Pittsburgh International Airport weather station data. But before I get to the analysis, we should do a quick Statistics 101 refresher on box plots. Box plots, sometimes called box and whisker plots, are a common graph statisticians use to quickly visualize the distribution of large datasets. What makes them great are their simplicity and how they show the spread of the dataset in one single chart. Box plots show the median, upper and lower quartiles, the lower and upper extremes, and statistical outliers all on one graph. Below is a figure showing these values on a box plot.

How to read a box plot (image taken from https://datavizcatalogue.com/methods/box_plot.html)

 

If you still can’t get enough on box plots, here’s a humorous two minute Youtube video.

Now that you understand how to read a box plot, we can now get back to the two questions at hand.

1.) Are wind speeds getting stronger during rain events in Pittsburgh? To answer this question I identified 6,331 individual rain events at the Pittsburgh International Airport dating all the way back to 1952. For each rain event I then determined the recorded max wind speed during each event. Using the max wind speed for each rain event, I then created a box plot for each year and put all the box plots on a single graph.

I also performed the same analysis by decade.

 

What do you notice about these graphs? Are the wind speeds of rain storms increasing? They certainly appear so. A few things I notice about this graph:

1. 1.  The annual median wind speed, shown as a green line, is increasing. In the 1950s through the 1990s, the median was around 15 miles per hour. In the 2000s it increased to 20-25 miles per hour. In the past two years and already in 2025, the median annual wind speed is around 30 miles per hour.
   2.  The upper quartile of the box has increased similarly. Interestingly, the lower quartile of the box has generally remained the same. This means that all of the rain storm wind speeds are shifting upward each year.
   3. The upper extreme (the top whisker) is increasing and outlier extreme wind storms (shown as red dots on the graph) are no longer outliers today. What was once an outlier data point in the mid 1990s, is now part of the “normal” dataset.

Based on historical data from the Pittsburgh International Airport and the graphs above, I would have to answer “YES” to Question 1 “Are wind speeds during storms getting stronger?”

As to Question 2: “Are storms with high wind speeds happening more frequently?” I decided to identify all the rain storms with wind speeds that exceeded 50 miles per hour and plotted them on a single graph.

This graph is even more telling. 2024 set the record with the most 50 mile per hour wind speed storms with six. In 2025 we are already at five rain storms over 50 miles per hour at the airport and we are only half way through the year. Based on the data, I would also answer “YES” for Question 2: “Are storms with high wind speeds happening more frequently?”

So now what? How should we be preparing for more powerful wind storms going into the future? Some ideas:

1. 1.  Get involved in a shade tree committee in your community. Wilkinsburg, Edgewood, and Swissvale all have shade tree committees and so does the City of Pittsburgh. These committees are often in need of all the help they can get. Reach out to UpstreamPgh for more information and we can put you in touch with the right people.
   2. Talk to your mayor and council person and demand an up to date tree inventory and tree assessment from your municipality. An up to date tree inventory ensures that the health of the trees in your community is being tracked and monitored.
   3. Ask your municipality if there is dedicated funding for the pruning and maintenance of trees, and removal of dying trees. Trees are infrastructure, and in order for infrastructure to function properly, regular maintenance is required. Maintenance of trees should be in the annual budget.
   4. Write a letter to your federal and state elected officials asking for increased emergency management funding for responding to natural disasters from acute wind storms. Feel free to include the graphs from this blog post to prove your point!
   5. Care for, maintain, and properly prune your own tree. If you have a tree on your property ensure that dead limbs are removed. Ensure that any limbs are not impeding or hanging over electrical wires. If you decide to prune the tree yourself, be sure to do so only during the winter season. Pruning of some trees like oak trees during the growing season can potentially spread disease such as oak wilt.

What NOT to do:

1. 1.  Hastily, cut down all your healthy trees on and around your property.
   2. Demand that your municipality cut down the healthy trees on your block.

There’s no question that trees and their ability to soak up and absorb rain water are going to be needed to withstand the increased rainfall that we are experiencing. We should not hastily cut them down in response to this storm. It’s important to recognize that a future with increased wind speeds from rain storms will require better planning and care for our urban tree canopy.

There’s no better time than now to get started.

Interested in reading more from Tom? Check out his previous blog post on Pittsburgh’s Lost and Forgotten Streams https://upstreampgh.org/pittsburghs-lost-and-forgotten-streams/