Wyoming Town Blows Away the Competition for Windiness

Chicago has a lot of nerve calling itself the Windy City when there are places like Arlington on the map.

Arlington (population 20, if you get here before one couple leaves for San Diego for the winter) is one of the windiest towns in America. The wind blows an average of 24 mph, day in and day out. Sometimes it really whistles.

“One hundred thirty mph is the fastest I’ve ever seen it, and that’s as high as it ever got. You can’t stand up hardly,” said 73-year-old Ted Griffith, a teller of what sound like tall tales of the Wyoming prairie. (Among other things, he insists that a headlight-spooked deer can be grabbed by the antlers, tossed in the back seat and driven all the way home with its head on your shoulder.)

Arlington, 80 miles west of Cheyenne, is a few houses and other buildings huddled at the south end of Rock Creek Valley, a shallow seam in the burlap-colored prairie. The wind blows out of the vast, flat expanse to the west of Arlington and squeezes between the mountains to the north and south of town. Interstate 80 runs nearby.

“It’ll blow cars off that dang road coming through here,” Griffith said. “I don’t know how many people I’ve pulled out from under cars. Wind just blew them over and tipped them over, on that ice-- shwipt!--into the ditch.”

Corri Rabidue, a waitress at the Outpost Cafe, which has a small counter with two stools, said Arlington fills with tractor-trailers on the worst days.

“We always laugh that you’ll know if a person’s not from around here,” she said. “If it’s a nice day, they’re the ones that are weaving all over the road. If it’s bad, we’re the ones that can drive straight because we’re so used to it.”

With winter come wind chills way below zero, and blowing snow can close I-80.

“You never like it,” Rabidue said. “When you’ve had weeks on end with nothing but wind into the 40 mph all day, you really get sick of it. I mean, because it just whistles.

“But you just kind of deal with it.”

The wind is actually a boon to some. Two years ago, a company called SeaWest began building sleek white windmills on the edge of the valley for some regional utility companies. The 105 structures, each 180 feet high, generate enough electricity for about 20,000 homes. The whirling blades look like some oversized science-fair project.

“It’s one of the better wind sites in the country, with very consistent wind speed for a large portion of the year,” said SeaWest vice president Steve Thompson.

When the wind hits 65 mph, however, the turbines have to be shut down to keep from overtaxing the system.

Rock Creek Valley is home to a few ranching families--the Whites, the Brokaws, the Simmses, the Dunmires--who spend more time in the wind than anybody. Up and down the valley, the fresh-cut hay piled into wooden bins looks like enormous loaves of bread.

“We’ve had times when we’re haying and the wind comes up and just takes it out of the country,” said Shelly Dunmire, who stopped in the Outpost for lunch. “You find it in the trees or in the creek or you just never see it again. In the winter, one of the jokes is when you want to feed your herd, you’re really feeding your neighbors’.”

As a recent late-afternoon sun gilded the hills and dappled the valleys in shadow, Audrey Brokaw and her daughter finished herding cattle off the rim. The family has one of the smallest ranches in the valley, about 10,000 acres.

“You learn to work with the elements,” she said, patting the nose of her black mare. “You work as best you can in such a manner that when it’s still, you get busy and do a lot of work, a lot of stacks. And when it’s windy, you do something else.”