Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Weather forecasters talk about wind shear a lot during hurricane season, but what exactly is it? I teach meteorology at Georgia ...

We often hear this term when weather is blamed for a plane crash. By definition, a wind shear is any change in wind direction and/or speed either going horizontally or upward in the atmosphere.

Wind shear is defined as the change in wind speed, wind direction, or both, over some distance. You may have heard airplane pilots talk about turbulence and warn passengers that they’re in for a bumpy ...