new property - driveway wind tunnel

hey y'all!

so my partner and i closed on our first home this week!! it's got over 4 acres of lawn & pasture where i will garden and raise chickens. we intend to inquire about purchasing adjacent land (forest and field) in the future, as the piece we bought was parcelled off by the landowner in the 90s, and he still owns the 80 acres nextdoor (i ask myself why the house only came with 4 acres when there were around 100.. seems like 10 would have been a normal amount given how rural it is? i very much digress...)

anyway, we live on the coast but are several kilometers inland, in a lowland area below a more mountainous (read: hilly) area. our property is on a corner and it slopes northward from 80m above sealevel to 65m. the house and yard is south facing at the top of the slope which is where my kitchen garden will be and the 4 acres of future orchard and field gardens are behind the house. there are trees on all sides but it's a windy area since it's coastal and i assume because we slope down from the hills (our "mountains" are only 360m above sealevel but are covered in windmills).

since i'm on the east coast, we get sou'wester storms in the summer and then in the winter i can only assume it's coming from the north. our windiest times of year are spring and fall and it seems like we get lots of wind from the west.

i want to make a food forest/windbreak/tree belt/snowfence but our driveway cuts up from the north-west side of the property and around the front of the house so it almost seems like it's already a wind tunnel and that it would possibly become more of a wind tunnel if i screw it up.

interested in planting white cedars and white spruce as my dominant evergreens because snow drifts will be an issue from what i gather. i have the previous owners' contact and they lived there since the early 2000s so presumably they would have some anecdotal weather data for me.

my other concern is juglones - i want to plant walnuts and butternuts as a part of my tree belts but want to keep them far away from any of the other things i'm growing, as well as not create shade. the problem is, the best place to do this is the north-west corner which is the bottom of the slope and i don't want to have my walnut trees rot if water ends up collecting around them (i am not sure that it would, the soil is well-draining from my research on the area). i also do not want to create a frost pocket at the base of the hill. i should mention that beyond the field, it does keep sloping down into the road and there is a park with a gulch across the road, so presumably frost and water would keep moving down that way?

mostly this post is me thinking out loud about the issue, but if anyone has any contributions as far as tree placement, i'd be stoked. i included the photo of the driveway direction which i find to be problematic as far as wind. the property line on the east is several paces beyond the trees, extending down through the pasture, but the east is not my issue...

thank you in advance for your thoughts!!

i plugged my coordinates into this thing if that's helpful at all!

Hey vv,

Congratulations on buying the place! It looks nice!

As for your concerns, I suppose I'm not the right person to answer, and hope someone with more experience will chime in, but the thing that strikes me is that since what's on the sides of the driveway are trees rather than buildings, it might slow the wind rather than redirect it into your "wind tunnel". From what I've understood, permeable barriers (like trees) slow the wind, while impermeable ones (buildings, some types of fences) redirect it, as well as creating whirlwinds and in some cases locally increasing the wind speed. Also, even if there was a wind tunnel effect, from what I understand it would be limited to one very specific wind direction.

It's a bit hard to tell from the aerial image only, but it kind of reminds me of the place where I grew up, except there it's a path rather than a driveway. Still, it's an open corridor in among trees and shrubs, facing an open area. I don't remember ever noticing that path "tunneling" the wind. Rather the opposite. Whenever we had high winds, taking a few steps into the path was like walking into a bubble of calm. Of course, it could be because the wind wasn't from that direction so often, but well. Just my random thoughts. Hope someone has better-quality input for you.

thank you for your response, elno!!! it's so cute that it reminds you of the place you grew up.

your insights are actually super helpful and i agree that the trees are dispersing them. i think my main issue is that they are all deciduous trees which lose their leaves very early in the autumn, especially if there are any high winds (all of our weather comes from the west so these are the first to lose them lol). we have white ash, sugar maple and a few red maple and big tooth aspen and red oak on that side of the property and only now are some white pine and eastern hemlock starting to get to be about a foot or two tall. i need to increase the density of the evergreens from that direction!

we've just had a massive hurricane in september and the park across the road is DEMOLISHED. there is a river running through a gulch so there are some steep slopes and it's just... felled trees galore. it makes me so sad and i hope that we can get climate change under control because this was a record-breaking hurricane but we've been having record-breaking hurricanes every few years for the past 2 decades now. this is where having an uneven aged stand becomes very important - the mature trees are being taken down at an alarming rate!!

so, my plan is to get some northern cedars from a nursery and transplant some baby white spruce, eastern hemlock and white pine from our woodlot. hopefully these will help the cause!!!

i really appreciate your so-called random thoughts, as you gave some insights that jogged memories for me that correspond with your statements! i remember saying in the city "wow i wish they hadn't chopped all the trees down in this area, it's a wind tunnel" about spots where i used to frequent. it makes perfect sense!

Eino Kenttä wrote: From what I've understood, permeable barriers (like trees) slow the wind, while impermeable ones (buildings, some types of fences) redirect it, as well as creating whirlwinds and in some cases locally increasing the wind speed.

This covers the key things, but I agree with VV - with weather weirding, big storms are increasing on the Canadian East Coast  - I have a friend who lives by St. Margaret's Bay.

So, just like permaculture says to, I'd go for layers and curves. Big, majestic trees are being lost directly, or often die up to 5 years after a hurricane due to science I can't remember. So replanting some of those would be good, but more so, protecting them with a shrubby layer of naturally shorter trees could be helpful. I'm currently reading, "Coppice Agroforestry" by Mark Krawczyk. ( https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/coppice-agroforestry/9780865719705-item.html ) Bordering your land with coppiced hedgerows or some of the other models Mark describes may make your land more resilient with the storms. It can also be a source of income for the land, and an ongoing source of firewood.

Building tall hugels in series, or curves to redirect the wind/water and shelter the base of some of the trees, and help hold water for when you get the other extreme of weather, might also be a valuable part of the plan (and puts windfall wood that's not useful for other purposes to good use.)

As much as summer shade on a house is often desirable, consider whether the risk of tree branches landing on it in a storm is worth it. A report I read from a windstorm prone area of the US was very clear about how strong a wall/window/roof had to be to stop a branch that was blown into it.

Hopefully, some more people will look at this problem and give some ideas. Consider what your whole plan for the property is, and what other infrastructure/plants may need some protection in the long term. Learn from others mistakes - overengineer rather than under, make sure outbuildings are firmly fastened down to Mother Earth, consider roof shape and orientation, build with dome shapes as they cope well with hurricanes, and consider personal safety if you're doing any upgrades to your home.

As for the driveway wind tunnel, I tried soooo... hard to convince Hubby to allow gentle curves in a farm road we installed through a section of forest, but I was minimally successful. The one "curve", needs more shrubbery on top of the hillock that made it easier to curve around it than go through it. Our winter winds tend to come from that direction, but most of the road is in a low area and there is a berm blocking that wind on the edge of the Municipal road that is just across an small open field at the start of our farm road. However, berms can push the wind flow up and over an area, but as Eino wrote, they can also cause the wind to swirl and/or speed up. Getting shrubby trees on the windward side of the berm would be helpful. It's hard to tell from your satellite picture, just how straight your road is, and whether there might be a way to interrupt the wind as it enters the road, +/- build a curve or two into the road. I'd also look at what's in the way of that wind as it exits the driveway. Does it blast right into your house, or does it bounce off it and carry on? Could you redirect or slow the wind with sturdy trellises in front of your house?

Some berms might be helpful for protection from the wind.

This:

I recently suggested a natural solution to a wind tunnel effect that was accumulating snow in the walkway. By planting trees and shrubs in an airfoil shape, the idea was to accelerate the wind through the area of accumulation and then deposit it on the back side of the airfoil shape off to the side of the walkway so that nature clears it naturally.

Something to think about.

vv anderson wrote:i plugged my coordinates into this thing if that's helpful at all!

Looks like you've done your homework, so Congrats on the new place!
Our winds come from the Northwest in the winter. There is a large field across the road where the wind gathers before it blows in my driveway, pretty much straight on, then the driveway curves a bit. I planted spruce as everyone is doing around here to make a wind/snow barrier. We are not short of snow and precipitation, but capturing snow is still important to delay spring a bit on our earlier blooming fruit trees.
I wish I had planted white pines as their needles are soft and they grow fast and huge. They can be kept trimmed into a tighter wall. I'm saying that... but I didn't trim my spruces and a couple of them are a bit scraggly.
Here, the wind is our friend: Essentially, it blows the driveway clean for us. Well, mostly.
Only the powdery snow, of course. When we have a "snow event" that closes the schools, snow piles up directly behind the line of trees, but where there is a break for the driveway, that never gets quite as deep. So, yes, the strong winds have been harnessed to keep the driveway clean...er.
Essentially, what you want is a "living snow fence" perhaps to capture snow or at least gather it where you don't mind having it pile up. Our summers can be quite dry, so capturing a nice amount of snow helps our trees make nice growth. If I had enough money, I would consider giving each tree his little snow fence: Just a stiff barrier to the North West of the fruit tree. [If you dream, as I do here, dream BIG.
I hope this link will help: One thing that I like about it is that they give you good pointers on the width, the distance you need, and especially to make that line a bit fatter by adding shrubs on both sides of the line of conifers.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/assets/documents/workingtrees/brochures/livingsnowfenceforweb.pdf
The arbor Day foundation can be a good source of trees when you need quite a few, but make sure you also talk to the local DNR. they were full of good ideas for which trees to use, how many, how close [and for free]
Good luck to you! Let us know how it turns out.

Hi,
Congratulations on your lovely property!  I can tell you're excited  
My first reaction to your question is to wait a year, and spend the time observing your property and getting to know it well.
It's not easy to hold back our enthusiasm, but from my experience, it's wiser.
Good luck!!

Congratulations on your new property.  We too, just purcahsed a new 4 hectare farm a few miles from the coast and up 300 ft.  But those occasional typhoon storms still bring in up to 70mph winds and heavy rains.  Both cause flooding and trees down, rip off roofs.     So I am building our house and greenhouses partially underground and still berming it up using geodesic dome shapes for structural integrity.  The shape naturally pushes wind over and around it and could save some of my trees in the redirection.  There are plenty of CAD files for tunnels, round geodesic domes, along with more traditional rectangle buildings with arches instead of hard corner edges.  These buildings can handle branches or trees, or loads, or 200 mph winds according to the US architecture association.  It also can be among the cheapest and efficient ways to build... in a short time.
Just a thought...
Van

I have to ask what this means?

there is a river running through a gulch  

The presence of windmills would normally trigger the thought of high persistent winds.
Did that occur to you,?
But your in now, would the use of smoke bombs help in windy periods to observe what is happening?