Storm Front—Walking the Periphery

A day in October, 2012

Walking the periphery; Boats get hit; Computer deluged with rain; Lightening strikes Ocean Pearl; Elements of weather—how we face it; Pictures of a storm front; A poem: Amy Lowell From Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914.

Walking the periphery

I see the sky change. Gun metal clouds accumulate. A weather front is moving in: air masses of different temperatures and densities will collide, but will not mix. The front separates air mass with different types of origins located along a trough of low pressure. It moves slowly. A boundary separates two air masses of different density and is located along the trough of low pressure. 

The clouds—usually strati-- move ahead of the warm front. Thunder claps and rumbles. The warm air is unstable. Rain is warm and wind increases.
To see active art depicting the different types of storm fronts—cold, warm, stationary, and occluded fronts, see--http://www.phschool.com/atschool/phsciexp/active_art/weather_fronts/ 

I walk the periphery of the storm front along the beaches in front of First Landing. It turns into a wind vortex with coconut trees bending and fronds dancing wildly.

Boats get hit

A group of boats had left Musket Cover for NZ. And a Beneteau from Tonga. The storm hit them. Especially the Beneteau. It got knocked down and/or rolled. Portholes were popped. Water poured in. They tethered their life raft to the boat as it slowly sank. And fate was on their side as a container ship came to their rescue.

Those from Musket Cove travelled as a group. Were in radio contact with each other and all hove to so that they could stay relatively close to each other should help be needed. They all made safe landing.

Computer is deluged with rain water

I raced back to the apartment. The rain tore in through the screened window slats—horizontally. I grabbed the small computer, slammed the shutters shut—but did not lock them, and ran onto the deck to rescue flying cushions and chairs. When I came inside the rain still came through the slats in shafts of water deluging my precious computer and flooding the floor in a pool of water.

I unplugged it, and dried it, and turned it upside down, and replugged it hoping the heat would dry it out, and sprayed electrical contact spray on the keyboard—a yachtie tip—and put it in the sun. Left it for a week hoping it would resurrect itself. It did, all but the keyboard. It does not work.

A new keypad awaits me in NZ. Until then I bought an external key board and plug it into the USB. I feel lucky.

Lightning strikes Ocean Pearl

Ocean Pearl got struck by lightning in a different storm and lost most of their electronics. Their insurance company is playing the game of evading responsibility for the most part. The yacht owners have to put out NZ$60K to replace all that is damaged.

I remember that night. We were on board Zulu and the fork and sheet lightening lit up the boat all night. It was a light show to remember. But Ocean Pearl saw it differently. They saw the lightening strike the water feet from their Amel. The electricity danced and sizzled and jumped across the water until it hit. And there was darkness. And their little grandchild cried in their arms.

Elements of weather--how we face it


The elements of weather make for our condition of atmosphere. They include: wind, temperature, pressure, humidity, clouds, and precipitation. Weather is linked to the impact of sun on the earth. And air motion depends on different atmospheric pressure, which in turn is linked to difference of temperature and the type of motion itself.

It is the collision and interaction and intricacy of impact of the moving elements of our atmosphere—that eggshell made of air, water vapor and suspended particles that shields our earth—that play into the weather of our lives…..and how we face it. 

How we benefit from the sunshine, the balm, the droughts, the cooling rain, the floods; how we come out of the storms alive.

Pictures of a storm front

Enjoy the pictures below of the storm front—and my walk along its periphery. And a poem by Amy Lowell that so aptly describes the impact: From Sword  Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914.






  
Walking the periphery of a storm front off First Landing, Viti Levu, Fiji

A poem: Amy Lowell (from Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914)

How should I sing when buffeting salt waves
    And stung with bitter surges, in whose might
    I toss, a cockleshell? The dreadful night
Marshals its undefeated dark and raves
In brutal madness, reeling over graves
    Of vanquished men, long-sunken out of sight,
    Sent wailing down to glut the ghoulish sprite
Who haunts foul seaweed forests and their caves.
    No parting cloud reveals a watery star,
My cries are washed away upon the wind,
    My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar,
My eyes with hope o’erstrained, are growing blind.
    But painted on the sky great visions burn,
    My voice, oblation from a shattered urn!