Coefficients of series expansions of turbulent velocity fluctuations in the viscous wall region are used to generate an arbitrary but quantitative measure of the time‐average strength of the near‐wall quasi‐streamwise vortices, which appear as ‘‘streaks’’ in flow visualization. Existing databases from direct numerical simulations of wall bounded turbulence are used to compute some estimates. The results show that the strength of the streaks is Reynolds‐number‐dependent, even in simple flows, as well as flow‐dependent, contrary to traditional law‐of‐the‐wall arguments. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.