Flagpole installation acrossWyoming

Flagpoles in Wyoming

In Wyoming the wind is not an event, it is the weather, and a pole here is judged on what it takes in an ordinary week rather than on one bad night a decade. The pole, the footing, the flag and the labour are all on the one quote.

Wind here. Most of Wyoming is drawn on the national wind map as a special wind region, which is the map saying it will not give the state one number and leaving it to the town. The towns we work in land on the same figure anyway. Cheyenne, Casper, Laramie and Gillette all design to 115 mph as a three-second gust, which means the strongest three seconds of a storm rather than an average across it. The ones that publish an exposure fix it at C, open ground with no credit for shelter, because there usually is none. What separates a Wyoming 115 from a 115 back east is not the peak, it is the hours behind it, and that changes what actually gives out. The shaft is rarely the problem. Halyards, snaps, swivels and flags wear through from constant motion, and a deep frost line and thin-air sun finish what the wind starts.

• The southeast plains and the Laramie Range — 115 mph at Cheyenne and Laramie, on ground the code already treats as open. A standard wall normally carries it, so the money is better spent on an internal halyard, stainless fittings and a spare flag than on a thicker shaft.
• The central basins — Casper designs to the same 115 mph and fixes the exposure at C, so nothing on the site counts as shelter. It is the frost line rather than the wind that makes a hole here cost more than the same hole further south.
• The Powder River Basin and the northeast — 115 mph at Gillette, over clay that swells when it is wet and shrinks when it dries. The extra money lands in the footing rather than in the pole.
• The western mountains and valleys — Jackson, Pinedale and Star Valley sit in the part of the map that carries no number at all, so the figure comes from the county and is looked up address by address. Snow and winter cold decide as much as wind does up here, so hardware and finish matter more than wall thickness.

Flying the Wyoming flag? We sell it, sewn to the state's own design specification and sized to sit under the national flag on your pole. See the Wyoming flag →