More on Wind

I have been thinking about that north wind (or northeast wind), the easterly that John referred to (see my previous post), and why it makes you feel so uncomfortable. I’m not sure of the answer, but I do, as you might expect, have some thoughts on it, which I will of course share, since that is what this blog seems to be about anyway. So here they are.

First, there is the weather that comes with this wind. It is almost always grey and damp, cold but not frigid. It chills the bones and depresses the outlook. Sometimes there are storms with easterlies – the blizzard of the northeasterly and the wet gale of the southeasterly – but these usually move through and conditions change. However, this northerly flow just keeps going and going and going, sometimes gusting harder but always going. And you are never sure when it will stop.

So, the second thing is its relentlessness. Other winds, like the happier westerlies, fluctuate. The norwester usually roars in right after the easterly storm moves out, and when it comes it can be fierce. It is a front coming through, and that front can last a few hours, but then the wind diminishes, and when that happens we usually get a day or two of clear skies and light winds, gentler weather no matter the time of year. The souwester functions differently, usually coming up around noon as the land warms up, and then dropping around sunset. This is a time of flat calm early mornings and late evenings, with the gusts of the afternoon wind scudding across the harbour. These are the westerlies, and they are winds we tend to like, because they usually bring clear skies and they have a cycle that is fairly predictable, with quiet times you can look forward to. But not that northerly that keeps going, day and night, with no suggestion of it ever changing (maybe I should have called this “moron wind”).

One Friday afternoon in Istanbul Lorraine and I were driving to the studio in Ortaköy for the weekend. As we were crossing to the European side on the Bosphorus Bridge, she noticed a large cloud formation over the Asian side. It was remarkable because we had never seen a dark brown cloud like that before, and when we walked down by the Bosphorus the water was unsettled and a strange warm wind was blowing from the south. We found out later that it was a lodos wind, another uncomfortable wind that can shut down the Bosphorus Strait to shipping, stop ferries from running, and make some people stay home from work. Like our northerly it is a very unsettling wind that can blow for days, and it can lead to a rush of northern air from the Ukraine, sometimes piling up snow in the winter. This wasn’t a winter lodos, the wind did let up, and that night it rained. In the morning our car, and everyone else’s, was spattered with powdery yellow spots from that dark brown cloud, dropping the fine dust the lodos had picked up in the Sahara with its heavy raindrops. We rubbed the dust between our fingers and thought of Egypt and Libya and the Sudan.

The summer we visited Crete we experienced another uncomfortable wind, called the meltemi or Etesian wind. Unlike the lodos it flows from north to south, starting in the Balkans, racing across the Mediterranean, and finishing in North Africa. On the south coast of Crete it came roaring down the mountainsides to the coast and straight out into the Libyan Sea. At water’s edge there was a slim strip of calm before the ripples started, and by the time the wind was 50 metres offshore, there was a serious chop with rainbows of spume being whipped off the tops of the waves. We watched a brushfire burning both down and up the slope through an olive grove on the edge of town and drove to the other side of the island hoping for some respite, but we never could escape the relentless rush of this wind.

I hope you understand that I do like wind; in fact, I like most winds. But there are some, like that pesky northerly, that can truly irritate and unsettle. The good thing is that they are rare, and they do pass, like our wind that did change, the day after my last post, letting the sun shine for three days in a row.

We are still between seasons (after all, this is coastal Nova Scotia), but the sun today was warm and strong, and tonight the lights across the harbour are reflected in still water. No wind. That will change, but for now there is no wind. And I am happy for it.