Does the tower really sway in the wind?
Yes, although this isn’t normally noticeable. On days with high, gusting winds, the wind can reach speeds in excess of 160 km/h at the summit of the tower, and a person at the summit can feel the tower swaying gently. Under such wind conditions, the tower is usually closed to the public, although there is always an engineer present at the summit to monitor telecommunications equipment. The magnitude of the sway in the tower, under worst-case conditions, is about 15 cm; this record was set in 1971, but it might have been beaten in the windstorms of December, 2000 (I have not been able to check this). I saw a particularly interesting demonstration of this on television some years ago. During a period of heavy winds, a live broadcast from the summit showed an engineer seated behind a large wrench suspended from the ceiling at the end of a string. The wrench was swaying gently to and fro like a pendulum, through an arc of 10 cm or so. I hope the engineer was not prone to motion sickness! T
