Processes in the atmosphere have long had the power to capture human imagination and determine the fate of major historical events. Wind and atmospheric transport produced the “pure and white clouds” described in the poetry of Keats and are responsible for the dust storms that blinded armies during the Napoleonic wars. In our own lives we experience and depend on wind every day. It affects how airplanes fly, the efficiency of automobile travel, and our ability to predict weather. Wind is air with velocity. Given that mass multiplied by velocity is a measure of momentum, wind can also be referred to as air with momentum. Through its velocity the wind is coupled to “forces” that drive or resist its flow, such as pressure and friction, respectively. Instabilities in the atmospheric flow develop as these forces work against one another, causing gustiness, or more formally, turbulence. Turbulence reflects departures in the velocity vectors of the wind from their mean values. Turbulence represents a variance about the mean velocity. Turbulent departures from the mean wind flow are complex and not currently subject to precise mathematical description, as stated in the humorous quip reprinted above from the renowned atmospheric physicist, Theodore von Kármán. The transport of mass, energy, and momentum in the atmosphere occur through both the mean and turbulent components of the wind. Thus, in order to understand atmospheric transport, we must develop an understanding of the wind.