Windsock
meteorological instrument
A windsock (also known as wind cone or wind sleeve) is a tapered conical textile tube made with relatively lightweight material. When hung from a pole, it can be used as a basic indicator of wind speed and direction, or as decoration. Windsocks are typically used at airports to show the direction and strength of the wind to pilots, and at chemical plants where there is risk of gaseous leakage. They are also sometimes located alongside highways at windy locations.
At many airports, windsocks are externally or internally lit at night. Wind direction is opposite the direction in which the windsock is pointing. Wind speed is indicated by the windsock's angle relative to the mounting pole— in low winds it droops; in high winds, it flies horizontally.
Design
Alternating stripes of high-visibility orange and white were initially used to help estimate wind speed, with each stripe extended adding 3 knots (5.6 km/h; 3.5 mph) to the estimated speed. Some circular frame mountings cause windsocks to be held open at one end and the first stripe extended, indicating a velocity of 3 knots even when stripes are not present. A fully extended windsock suggests a wind speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) or greater.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q216346. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Windsock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.