The wind is a movement of the air. Most textbooks start teaching about the wind by going to the beach. We learn that rising hot air over the sandy beach moves out over the ocean where it gradually cools and sinks to the ocean surface. Since nature “hates a vacuum”, this now-cooled air moves inland to replace the departed rising warm air. We actually have two winds in this discussion of what is called a sea breeze. The air moving along the surface is one wind and the air high overhead moving out to sea is another wind.
In the world, we find general movements of air from the warm equator towards the cold polar areas. This is why the winds in West Virginia generally blow from out of the west. There are many other factors involved such as Coriolis Effect, the Jet Stream, and areas of rising and sinking air. For more information about global wind patterns, try this site on the Internet: http://www.absoluteauthority.com/weather/ . One thing to remember about the wind,, when we say the wind is a “west wind”, we are saying that the wind is out of the west.
Why does the weather report include mention of how fast the wind is blowing? The winds bring us our weather. If the wind is blowing out of the west and you know that there is a snowstorm to the west, you can be pretty sure that it will soon snow. If the winds are blowing out of the north, you will soon see the temperatures drop. Knowing where the winds are coming from allows the weather forecaster to predict tomorrow’s weather. It helps us to have a good idea what to expect in the near future in terms of temperature and precipitation.