2

. July 21, 1966. '

8'The Guardian, Charlottetown, Thurs

ACROSS THE ISLAND

Storms Often Start

By NEIL A. MATHESON Provincial‘Farm Editor BEFORE. 1--get—into—this_week’s colfmn, I. want to ex- tend congratulations and very best wishes to my friend Char-

“les S. MacDonald, Lower Montague who will be+100 on Sat- urday and looks many years younger

DID YOU ever “onder where storms start? They -have to gtcrt-somewhere- and berne Johnston tells me he has seen those things start as harmless looking ripp onthe water

in a.calm sea .

Mr__Jchnston_lives onthe .Seven Mile Road in Kings County. He spends the winters in Florida He fishes Lobsterg, in the East Point area, I believe, when they are in season As a quiet fisherman he has viewed the phenomena of storms originating, as he describes it, “from a Stationery buat far out to sea, where the water is very turbulent, as in the case of strong tides flowing over shallow reefs. The water | come€ from ‘much deeper water on both sides of the reef | Mr. Johnston tells. me the reef he has in mind is approx-

imately six miles wide, on: the inside, and approximately 20

miles loag. On the outside end it is nearly 20 miles wide THE AVERAGE depth on top of the reef is 60 feet, it's

150 feet deep on either side. The southwest side rises almost —perpendicutar—and-there*s—a~votume—of wwater— 75 milestong — and 60 miles wide that. is hitting the reef at between ny and seven miles per hour

It sounds harmless to me ‘writing tt, ‘many miles aw, or to. you whe are reading about it in this ¢olumn. But. Mr

Johnston assures me “the turbulenee created”’ is really some- thing.”’

Mr. Johnston likes to watch it “on a calm summer day to see and feel the vertical winds of the ocean breath- .as he describes it

There s a flat calm on either side of the reef, but on top

of the reef. where the turbulence is great, the winds come

almost straight down—-the angle .is about 70 degrees— and strike the surface with’such force ‘as to cause Whitecaps tir—

—great-abuadanée——all-cucr_the reef area. These winds vary in _ 4

velocity from nearly zero to 20 or 30 miles per kour—in some

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case “they reach gale force.”

Near Vertical Winds |

AIR TEMPERATURE on either side” of the reef ‘will be around 70 to 80 degrees. Atop the reef, which is-pounded by near vertical winds, the reading will be from 60 degrees, all the wav down to 45...*. :

The loncer the wind blows down, the cooler it gets

Often.. Mr. Johnston tells me, this disturbaffte «vill be followed next day by horizontal winds, floating almost at right angles, on one sice of the reef.(WNW) it will be blow- - 2 to 30 miles per hour. the wind: will be approximately the same velocity on the other side

But there'll be no wind or movement of air, atop the reef, thouch the weter will be just as turbulent, *‘and you will have the rare sensation of having difficulty in- breathing.”

And here’s. an interesting observation

“The vacuum created in’such cases is of such great mag- nitude that it pulls air frem_ surrounding areas, with such force and speed, that it often results in gale-force winds.”

At such a time undeserved criticism is heaped on the weather forecaster “But how .could he’possibly know about the low pressure?”’, Mr. Johnston asks, when the nearest re- - porting station may be many hundreds ot miles, away

The stiuation exists in Europe, he observes, where the low pressure areas above the Mediterranean often suck the “creat Northers” down across France, sometimes with _dis- -astrous results’

SS

Storm Born la ek Area

.... OFTEN A ‘‘storm is born” right ‘in. the middle of a calm yi onformant “cites the case-of-one day in May 4965-4 ag was clear, and fine, the wind was WNW. at be- zht- and 10 miles per hour

The tide was away above normal-at 4:30 a.m. and every- one was puzzled why. the tide should be off sO much, especially, on wich a fine morning

‘The answer came suddenly, he recalls, when the tide turned, the wind hauled into the north and started to “‘breeze up’. At the same time a small-cloud_started to form a short distance ‘away right in the middle & the turbulent water on the reef, on a range of about 15 fathoms.

The cloud was about 200 feet above sea level and it in- tensified into a severe storm in less than one hour's. time. The storm ‘“‘developed with terrifying swiftness, the snow‘ cut visibility down-—to-zero-in_a few. minutes. .

The wind increased quickly to about 30 mph

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i no heavy seas developed. Even more puzzhng, he explains~ was

plains, the fact- that compasses were useless. They acted “like the storm loaded the air’: Radios were a mere jargon of noise i

“COULD IT be that the vertical winds of the previous day pulled Ions from tke ionosphere; or some other form of energy that energized the storm was pulled close to the earth by the same winds, he asks.

A few miles gn either side the weather _was normally fine.

Freak Storms Are Described

HERE ARE two other examples Mr. Johnston has given me

In June 1942 there was ‘a mast unusual® ‘‘freak day" The wind “came fromy the south on the south side of the reef, s6 from the north on the north side. [he velocity was approx- imately 25 mph, the temperature was 65. There was no wind at» all on the reef. But all along’ each edge of ‘turbulent water, far as visibility would permit towards the. open sea, as many as eight waterspouts could be counted at any | given tirne; and this lasted for the.duration of the rising tide.‘

In July of 1944 freak local storms produced winds up t 75 mph, and these were accompanied by -huge abnormal tides, but there was no precipitation at all. But all of the storms had a very low reading on the barometer, which adds to the strangeness :

» IF ANYONE disbelieves the ‘stories told here, Mr John- ston advises him to go to the area he describes and watch nature perform

Mr. Jonnston feels he may really hive got hold of some

* thing important fn the business of weather observation. He notes that Capt. David G. Holes’s hook, ‘‘The Story of the Weather’: he observes that “The ‘creat’ scientific advances have always. been spearheaded by amateurs”. All the—profes-— tons owe their origin to an amateur, Capt Holes adds, ‘for who could be a professic onal in a field not yet created?”

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Incredible Discoveries Foreseen

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Singer. in his introduftion suggests “no doubt we are on the threshold of incredible discoveries .n weather science which | will have ap exciting impact upan the shape of the future.”

Mr. Johnston notes that a ‘mysterv is no longer a my- stery, after you understand it. This article of his, from which I-am quoting. “‘c ins a description of, a discovery. or breakthrough the absorbing of the atmosphere. or parts of it, by the ocean :

If weather science: wishes to discover the cause. of hur- ricans ises that a submarine should be equipped with all the st gadgets nd have it ready for the next hur- ricane seascn

The most likely place to watch for the nuclei of a hur- ricane e suggests ould bh here @#ere. are very strong: i tides. flow r. sl ree : |

After ages of the hurricagg are formed it will probal niles before it- 1S big enough to. be plotogr athe itellife, and even then™ there might n to make it \ ble at such heights

In Vividly Clear Atmosphere

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