Technical Abstract: Wind erosion event intensities vary greatly from occasional saltation during afternoon wind gusts to very intense storms that result in large amounts of soil loss and fugitive dust. We examined the soil loss data from 172 wind erosion events during eight years of wind erosion measurements made at Big Spring, Texas, USA to determine the range of variability. In order to understand the effects of surface soil conditions and crop residue cover on near-surface wind speeds, we instrumented several fields with different soil surface conditions and residue covers with wind profile masts with anemometers placed at 0.01, 0.5, 1, and 2 m heights. Wind speed data were collected at 1 s intervals when the hourly average wind speed at 2m was > 3.5 m s-1. We found that 2m 1 minute mean wind speeds < 13 m s-1 resulted in normally distributed near surface wind speeds with variances that increased linearly with 2 m wind speed and that the 95th percentile near surface wind speed was always less that the 2 m mean. However, for 2 m 1 minute mean wind speeds > 13 m s-1, the surface wind speeds were no longer normally distributed, the variance increased much more rapidly, and the 95th percentile of near surface wind speed was often greater than the 2 m mean wind speed. The presence of soil surface roughness tended to reduce this effect slightly and the presence of surface crop residues appeared to eliminate it entirely.