MATH OF WIND DRIFT By Michael Niksch – May 2020
Wind drift increases by the square of the distance.
If you shoot at 25y and are seeing 1/16” of drift...you can expect to see 1” at 100y if the same conditions are present all the way to the target. 100y is 4 times the distance of 25...so 4 squared is16.
If you measure drift in angular format instead of distance...such as mil or moa...it does not need to be squared.
So,if you measured 1/4 moa at 25...it would be 1 moa at100. This is why it’s far more convenientto measure drift in the reticle and plan for different distances.
If you could only use one wind flag...it would be best to place it in the first 25 yards of a 100y range.
What is happening in that first 25 is more weighted in importance than the rest of the distance.
You can easily visualize this by taking a leaf blower and placing it on full blast just in front of the muzzle and shooting.
Now take the blower and put it just in front of the target and shoot. You will be way off your mark with the blower at the muzzle...while you will notice no shot movement from the blower at the target.
Those numbers are rounded a little.
Most guys place their flags at nice even intervals out to the target.
Doing it like that means that each flag further down the range is less and less a contributor to the total drift of the pellet.
It’s better to break the flags up into equal zones of influence. For 25m and 2 flags...2 equal zones of influence will be first flag at 13 feet, and second flag at 54 feet. So, by this spacing, you can notice that what happens in the first 26 feet is equally of influence to what is happening in the last 56 feet. If the flags are pointing opposite directions with the tails indicating the same velocity...you can expect your pellet to have virtually no drift.
This is very boiled down technique.
Too many flags is simply information overload...especially if they are each showing you a different percentage of overall drift influence.
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