Cathy Graves, age 9, of Victoria, B.C., Canada, for her question:

How fast can the wind blow?

The weatherman has a list of the names of the winds and the speeds at which they blow. When he reports that a gentle breeze is expected to blow from the west, he means that a westerly wind will be wafting along at 8 to 12 miles an hour. A fresh breeze blows at 19 to 24 miles an hour and causes the boughs to sway. A moderate gale blows at 32 to 38 miles an hour and is strong enough to bend the trees. A whole gale of 55 to 63 miles an hour is strong enough to tear mighty trees up by their roots.

The strongest and fastest wind on the weatherman’s scale is the hurricane. A wind reaches hurricane speed at 75 miles an hour, but it can blow much faster than this. The howling winds near the heart of a great hurricane storm have been known to reach 200 miles an hour. There may be a few times when the wind blows even faster than this, but it hardly ever blows faster than 200 miles an hour.