World’s Largest Weather Vane
Wednesday, 21st January 2009 by Ian Brown
The world's largest weather vane can be found in Yukon, alongside the runway at Whitehorse airport, in the unusual form of a DC-3 plane.
After 28 years of service, mostly among Canada's northern communities, the plane was retired in 1970 and lay idle for a while. Volunteer effort led to its restoration and it was mounted on a carefully designed pedestal in 1981. The plane is so well balanced that a wind of only 5 knots will cause it to turn. According to Wikipedia, the DC-3 is almost 20m long, 5m high and weighs over 8000kg.
I should mention that, from what I can tell, the plane has not been officially recognised, with the Guinness World Record currently being held by a weather vane atop the Tio Pepe facility in Jerez, Spain. However, as it's somewhat smaller than a plane, and the Google images are not great, it's hard to spot. Live Maps has a clearer view.
It's difficult to find much information about the Tio Pepe weather vane - this site describes it as standing almost 40m tall (but judging from the pictures that height must includes the building it is atop) and weighing 2700kg.
In addition, there is a weather vane in Montague, MI staking a claim to be the largest, though again - at 14m tall and 8m long - it may be taller than a DC-3, but is not quite as big! The Google imagery of the town is very low resolution, but Live Maps has a pretty good bird's eye view.
About the author
Ian Brown lives in Ottawa, Canada, and spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle.
Somewhere on the net years ago, I found where people had taken jet planes and mounted them on poles similar to that vane but they converted them into houses and people lived inside. The wings were the porch and the plane would rotate in the wind. I wish I could find that page again…