Desert Winds and Electrical Energy
The energy of the wind can be channeled into other forms of energy besides the energy used as an erosional agent. This is especially true of desert winds. Today, some desert wind is used to make electricity. Wind velocity is affected by air temperature. When air warms and cools, it changes density, which creates air pressure differences that cause wind. In the desert, temperatures may range from 40º F at night to more than 120º F in the daytime. Because of this temperature fluctuation, wind is generally stronger in desert areas. There are many windy areas in California. It is usually windier during the summer months when wind rushes in from cooler areas, like the ocean to replace hot rising air in California's deserts. In Southern California, the hot air from the desert goes up and out over the Coast Range, reaching seaward. When it cools off it descends and flows back toward the land and re-enters the desert through such loop holes in the Coast Range as the San Gorgonio Pass - the old Puerta de San Carlos - above Indio. The rush of wind through this particular pass is quite violent at times. For wind is very much like water and seeks the least obstructed path. Throughout the
It becomes easy to see how this particular geologic structure is being used as a "wind farm." The desert wind phenomenon created by desert winds leaving and re-entering the desert area, the Coachella Valley, for example, did not occur rapidly. The San Gorgonio Pass was created by the San Andreas fault system.6 The San Gorgonio Pass is the easiest route into the coastal basin, since it has an easy grade. The eastern end of the pass enters the Coachella Valley at Whitewater Canyon. It does so as a well-formed gradual slope, and is about 1.5 miles wide measured between Windy Point and Whitewater Hill. The summit of the pass is at the west edge of the City of Beaumont, at 2,600 feet elevation. Nowhere is the pass a steep grade. From Beaumont, the pass slopes gently eastward for ten miles to Cabazon at 1,800 feet, and in another nine miles enters the Coachella Valley at 1,200 feet. The average grade is about 1.5 percent.6
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Approximate Word count = 813
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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