Weather Almanac for December 2003

SING ME THE SONG THE WIND MAKES

The storms of the past month, common here on the Pacific Coast in December, have brought winds of a force that has shaken, but not stirred, the parked cars in the neighbourhood, apparently setting off their alarms in the middle of the night.

Wind sound also entered into a conversation with my mother concerning some minor surgery for an ear infection. "It's like being in a wind tunnel," she explained. Having spent time in a wind tunnel — which sounds like (and is) a huge fan — I knew her analogy was technically flawed, though I understood the gist of her remark. But it started me thinking on wind and its sounds.

Wind is a generally invisible force of nature that we sense more easily by feel, sound, and at times by smell. Sound, however, has been its dominant clue for me of late, but to really hear the nuances of its voice, I had to venture away from home and the overwhelming noise of the street to the tranquillity forest and shore.

What are the songs the clan of Aeolus sings? How much louder are the voices of the Storm Gods? Questions surfacing as the enchantment of wind again enters my being.

By The Wind-Singing Sea

Strolling along the shore of Island View Beach, the wind held a rather steady note above the drumbeat of the swells signalling the incoming tide. I heard it whisper in my ear, offering secrets I could not comprehend though they rustled the dune grasses to excitement. What did I miss?

The mood was more subdued today than 24 hours ago when wind drove pouring rain in slanted sheets and sent whitecap spray skyward. As I sat this morning in the comfortable sunlight looking out over James Island, even the scattered cumulus fording the moat to the continent merely moseyed eastward. As a result, my list of wind sounds remained more inventoried memory than perceived reality, and so I fulfilled Murchie's assignment with free association. My shoreline list of wind sounds looked like this:

The Wind In The Trees

For stage two of the exercise, I moved my base of operations to the shores of Beaver Lake. While at the seashore, the wind sang unaccompanied, or at least unplugged, at the lake the wind had a full orchestra for backup and a chorus of avian voices. Late autumn brings the fullest symphony as the deciduous trees offer branches leafed and unleafed, and supple green or dry, crisp brown leaves, and conifers presented their ever-constant range of phrasing. Below, the autumnal surface provided an enhanced percussion session of dry leaf rattles.

Even though these two locations are mere kilometres apart and I absorbed their delights within a span of hours, it is the nature of British Columbia to present millions of microclimates and micro-weather variations over small distances. And so, at Beaver Lake a spunky wind blew across the lake and over the forest canopy, leaving chattering zephyrs at the base of trees sighing heavily above.

I picked a special tree placed at centre-stage, row one, for my second round of Murchie's charge. Here is my wind sound list, forest-lake style:

As I rose to leave, a solo voice emerged distinct above the others, a flutter and clatter. I looked for its source, and there, atop a medium-height giant maple, a single large, desiccated maple leaf clung precariously to a high branch terminus, determined to be the last of its cohort to release from the alto section and flutter to the bass-ment of the canopy.

Storm Sounds

Acoustic engineers have firmly established that the sound level of the pure wind (in decibels) is proportional to wind speed, increasing in volume as the wind picks up. But what we hear is also affected by the temperature of the air and its structure and by whether the wind is blowing toward or away. Gusts within the wind stream give additional waver and quaver to the wind song. At 20 km/h (13 mph), average wind noise is 40 db and rises to 85 db at 100 km/h (62 mph). The sound level at 85 db is equivalent to a garbage disposal or food blender, much noisier than 40 db which is the lower limit of urban sound, a quiet city day. A normal conversation clocks in at 60 db.

Storm winds therefore have a bigger voice, often engendering the greatest fears among those caught in the storm's wrath: a cry, a howl, a wail of wind. In many instances, the sound of the wind is the first note, a startling knock on the door of awareness.

Tornadoes often first announce their presence with a raging voice that eyewitnesses have described as sounding like:

Those caught in the persistent driving winds of hurricanes have described them as:

Blizzards and the frigid breath of Nortus and friends have their own aeolian voices, heard as:

Wrapping Up

The next storm in line off the coast is tuning its strings and adjusting its reeds, though at present, all I hear is the tuning-fork ping of the wind chime beside my window, when lull becomes waft. I hear curtain time for the next performance will be after dark, so as I set down my pen, I wonder: lullaby or wake-up call?

Learn More From These Relevant Books
Chosen by The Weather Doctor

• Deblieu, Jan: Wind : How the Flow of Air has Shaped Life, Myth, and the Land, 1998, Houghton Mifflin Company, ISBN 0-395-78033-0.
• Huler, Scott: Defining the Wind: the Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science Into Poetry, 2004, Crown Publishers, ISBN 1400048842 HC, 304 pages.

Written by
Keith C. Heidorn, PhD, THE WEATHER DOCTOR,
December 1, 2003

The Weather Doctor's Weather Almanac Sing Me The Song The Wind Makes
©2003, Keith C. Heidorn, PhD. All Rights Reserved.
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