Traffic Hurt By "Wind Gazers"

For those of you that actually read my blog over the holiday weekend, you will know that I drove through Indiana on Friday as well as Sunday. Anyone that has driven through Indiana knows that the entire state is relatively boring in terms of scenery.

For as far as the eye can see you are overwhelmed by cornfields and nothingness (with the exception of Indianapolis which lasts for all of 10 minutes). However, the wind farms on 1-65 have broken up this sprawling boringness of the flat land with towering beacons of clean energy.

It really is impressive to see hundreds of these wind turbines moving at once, especially when you consider that each one of these things costs upwards of $2 million. Another cool aspect of this particular wind farm is its incredibly close proximity to the highway that the video below demonstrates.

However, there may be one small draw back for these wind farms in Indiana. I didn’t notice this on Friday because the roads were so empty, but on Sunday when everyone was heading back home from their holiday weekend the traffic was noticeably slower once we entered the wind farm.

Up until these farms traffic was chugging along at 70-75 mph, but once we entered the wind turbine fields, traffic dropped to around 60 mph. This doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but it was noticeably slower.

This is probably because many people are just not used to sprawling fields of towering pinwheels, and traffic probably wasn’t helped by people like me that were taking pictures and videos with their cell phones. Once we passed through the farms traffic jumped back up to its regular pace, but it was very interesting to witness these changes in speeds.

I'm just as guilty of taking pictures while driving.

I imagine (and hope) that as time goes by and these wind turbine fields become more of a standard sight people won’t be as distracted and almost mystified by these turbines – I just wonder how long that will take.