wind rose
- noun
- /wɪnd roʊz/
- Specialized
:
rosa de los vientos
- This wind rose illustrates the average wind patterns over the past year, showing peaks in easterly winds.
Examples
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By studying the wind rose, the sailors determined that they would face strong winds from the south-west.
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The wind rose plot of the wind stress occurred in the three regions during the days of the surveys.
Academic text (2018) -
This wind rose shows that for the next 60 days, the prevailing winds will blow from an easterly direction.
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The wind rose indicates that most winds in this area come from the north-east during spring.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a diagram showing wind frequency and strength by direction' is not transparently derivable from the constituents: 'wind' is clear but 'rose' is ambiguous (flower, past of 'rise', or the specialised 'compass rose' diagram) and B1 learners who only know basic senses will not infer the technical cartographic/meteorological sense. This is a specialised, conventional term in meteorology/cartography rather than a regular compositional noun, so learners who know the constituent words but not the term will likely not understand it.
Etymology
Wind rose comes from a simple picture: lines like flower petals point in the directions the wind blows, and longer petals show how often the wind blows that way. That's why a wind rose means 'a diagram that shows wind direction, strength and frequency'.
