Gust or Gale?
Today is a windy, blowy day in NJ – the water outside is choppy and the waves are crashing against the edge of the harbor. It has been rainy and windy all weekend, churning up stuff from the bottom of the Hudson – claiming new stuff from the edge of the Hudson. My downstairs neighbors (on the 2nd floor) have large balconies. Yesterday they were full of deck furniture and pillows that the residents were too lazy or busy to put inside – now I see some of them joining the detritus in the Hudson.
I got a ‘weather warning’ again (see Grand’s Real Adventures for my true opinion). This was said “Gust and Gale Warning!” Which led me to realize, I have no idea what the difference is between a gust and a gale. Now before you ay you know, and that everyone knows, I challenge you. Give me a quick description without the google machine.
Turns out that a gale is sustained winds between 34-47 knots. A gust is a rapid fluctuation of wind speed with variations of 10K or more. Now – what is a knot? 34 K = 39.12 MPH, 47 K is 54.09 MPH. 10 K is 11.5 MPH.
Living in Utah, our house was in a wind tunnel right at the bottom of Parley’s Canyon. We would occasionally get canyon winds up to 70 or 80 MPH. They would sometimes last a few minutes – sometimes a few hours – but never a few days. I remember when I was little after one such event, mom loaded us all in the gold station wagon for a tour of the felled trees in the neighborhood. This one – probably in the late 1970’s, took out at least a dozen of the largest pine trees in the neighborhood.
Our family had a secret pride that our front yard pine tree was one tough old tree, and never tipped. If it had, it would have crashed right into the front room of our home – but though we anticipated it a few times, it never happened. One year, it was selected to serve as the ‘City Christmas Tree” for downtown Salt Lake – but when we found out that they had to kill it to make it happen, we opted out, an turned down the (then) fortune of $2500.
Ironically – the following year, when the sewer pipes on our street were being replaced (those giant 5’ concrete pipes that weigh many, many tons), one of the pipes rolled off the truck and smack into our tree, causing its demise. We mourned for the loss, but were grateful it hadn’t taken out the front of the house.
Mom soon replaced it with another blue spruce that graced the yard for many years until it, too, got too big, and lost its battle with a canyon wind.
Looking out my window today – over the choppy, white crested water, I realize who loves wind the most of all. Seagulls. We have about 80 floating around on the water in the harbor. Suddenly, one or two of them take off for their opportunity to float among the updrafts – twisting, diving, singing, reeling all about like silly drunken birdies. They dive-bomb down to the posts in the harbor and push each other off their perches, claiming them for their own as they were the brave ones. Then the displaced bird starts the soaring, careening, freedom dance all over again.
Meanwhile, in baby land – our precious boy is almost a year now. He has learned ‘mamamamamama’ and ‘dadadadadada’, and ‘nananananana’ and says them over and over again, laughing all the way. We went for a drive yesterday, and I had to laugh as he performed his pre-nap ritual of humming very loudly, crying for a minute, and then nodding off to dreamland. A beautiful life, indeed!
