Abstract This paper presents a review of some measurements of turbulence scale effect on the mean drags of rectangular cylinders. In the case of square cylinders exposed to a fixed turbulence intensity, two sets of data indicate a turbulence scale effect on the mean base pressure (∼ 25% reduction) for a turbulence scale twenty fold the cylinder frontal dimension. For smaller scales, the square cylinders mean drag appears influenced principally by the turbulence intensity. This paper also reviews some of the measurements of solid blockage effects on the mean drags and base pressures of two dimensional rectangular cylinders. The different methods are usually empirical and based on slopes of data that differ from one wind tunnel to another. An empirical method taking into account the models aspect ratio is proposed. Its application to smooth flow data (6 different sets) has given good corrected results. The method has been applied to data of models exposed to a turbulent flow and flows with incidence.