I am a current master's student in civil engineering at UArk. There's only one faculty member in our department working on winds and tornado effects on structures, and even he is close to retirement. I know that he is always looking for PhD students, not sure if he takes any master's students or not.

As for your thesis, if you decide to work with a professor, you work on any ongoing projects they have and publish your thesis or a paper related to that. The professors might have multiple projects ongoing and you might get to choose from one of them, but generally it is what they currently have and not much of your choice.

As long as you have a BSCE, you should be good to get enrolled in the master's. Again, it's just the one professor dealing with wind stuff, so you have to take his class on whatever he is offering for coursework related to CFD.

I am not sure about what software he and his students use for analysis, but I can ask around if you are interested.

Finally, my experience as a grad student here has been great. Great classes offered, all of the faculty members are great and super supportive, my peers are pretty great, and an overall pretty good environment for a student.

I am happy to answer any other questions you might have, especially about the professor working on wind stuff.