Noel:
I asked Mike Keiser specifically about how to think about the wind before we started building Pacific Dunes.
His reply was that over the entire year, the wind probably blew almost as often from the south-southwest [the winter wind] as from the north [the summer wind], but that we should consider the summer wind the prevailing wind since that's when the majority of the resort guests would be there.
One thing that helped me handle it was that Crystal Downs has the same two prevailing winds ... although at the Downs it is a day-to-day thing which one you'll see. It blows out of the south/west as a low pressure system is moving in, and then it turns around and blows from the north for 2-3 days after the storm passes.
In really windy places you just have to think about holes when they are straight downwind or straight into the wind, and try to make them make sense for both conditions. This doesn't mean you have to build all medium par fours ... you can build a long 4 which plays like a 5 some days, though it helps if you have a short 5 which plays like a 4 on those days to give you some balance.
Barnbougle's prevailing wind [from the west] is much more consistent, yet when we were there for the opening the wind was blowing out of the east ... which Brian Schneider said he'd seen maybe only 5 days in the time he lived there. The irony is that after designing the whole place for the prevailing wind, Mike Clayton and others thought it was more fun in the east wind, when the par-5's on the back were very tough and the short par-4's were both driveable.