Interesting use of canopy/parking garage lights lol. That's some crazy wind power. I wonder if a round pole would have held up better?

That 'box' saved the lights
I wonder if the pole was weakened - like maybe internally rusting? or something.
What sort of wind-speeds did they have?

Yeah the pole must've had some degree of rot or something. Unless the lights weigh 1000 pounds each I don't think the pole would have bent like that without REALLY strong wind. Kinda cool how it landed perfectly on that box. I wonder if they're going to reuse the lights or install new ones.

A round pole may have been stronger,it should have been a thicker walled square tube at least to prevent kinking,the winds were 100 km/hr (60 mph) The pole was installed in 2009,hard to say if there was significant internal rusting yet.The lights were reused and pole replaced. The box contains a propane tank filling station.

If it'd crushed that 'box' there could have been some serious "fireworks"

60mph... I don't really consider that s strong LOL Not too uncommon to get 80mph gusts here... and on rare occasion 100mph (I've got to feel what a 100mph gust feels like (up on the roof too not fun)

Yeah good thing it bent over slowly, boom It usually doesn't get that windy here, the wind gusts may have been stronger at this location. Wow 80 to 100 mph there If the wind was that strong here there wouldn't be much left. As far as I know last time the wind reached 89 mph here was in the 60's when a typhoon came through.

Here's a EPA wind map for light pole selection, but it only includes the USA. Looks like in RI you need poles capable of withstanding at least 90MPH.

@lite_lover:
I do remember once reading that there's extra wind restrictions for building stuff here.

Doesn't happen all that often (like 1-2x year for gusts up to 80 & 90/100 being less common), and usually we only get windstorms in the winter/early spring. Sometimes it'll go for most of the night though. Its all due to the mountains, that wind can really get whipping down those slope in the winter when high/low pressure systems get in just the right position.
The big difference in the winds we get here is yeah gusts can go over 80, but thats just a gust that'll last a minute or 2 then cut back to 20-30 for a few minutes...and so on.
Where something like a typhoon or hurricane is it could be a 90mph sustained wind, so its putting constant pressure on stuff instead of the slow/fast thing.


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Thinking back I do once remember seeing a streetlight in a park laying over after wind...but it was also clearly rusted at the bottom (I think the metal actually cracked rather than bent.) They never replaced it, just removed & put a box over the wires.

@streetlight98:
Interesting seeing that map. There really should be a small band of 90-100 along what'd be the edge of the mountains in Colorado though LOL

We get the NE winds out of the mountains too mostly in the winter, 50 or 60 mph at the most. Other low pressure storms bring the strong Southerly winds. I'm about 40 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean so the winds are not as strong here as they would be right along the open coastline which frequently reach hurricane force in winter storms.