We’ve had a wolf-pack of low pressure systems, vying in the savagery of their winds, for a fortnight now.
/>The trees have thrashed as express-trains of wind that have gusted through our yard. I have lain in bed, imagining huge seas crashing on my home beach, clawing at the kayaks, tied to a thorn-tree.
The forecast is for yet stronger winds as the new moon approaches, bringing bigger tides. I have no idea where my pots are in all this real and imagined mayhem.
I went down to check things yesterday through a blinding drizzle. The sea in the cove was muddy, but innocently calm. The South-westerly wind howling at home is offshore on this coast. The Preseli Hills also help mute it.
The only winds that hit hard here are the Northerly and its brothers. They power in, and build a serious swell. I must learn this.
The beach I fished from in Llanrhystud, Ceredigion was a classic lee-shore, reacting to all winds except Easterlies.
The biggest seas there came with a south-westerly. As the wind veered round to the West, then North-West, the ground-sea would diminish, turning into white-horses and foam.
North-westerlies are nine-to-fivers. If you need to nip out and they are forecast, you can sometimes sneak out early, before they get up. A July party-trick of theirs is to blow up to a crescendo on an incoming tide on a Summer afternoon, only to die to a calm innocence with the dusk, leaving a horde of exhausted holiday boatsmen who went out over the tide.
Easterlies look nothing from the shore, but a mile out make a short, sharp sea that turns work into a tangled struggle. This wind is the one that quietly wafts kids on inflatables into an RNLI logbook. Common in August, 'the month of interference'.
A South-Easterly could bring a ground-sea. Often it was prelude to a blow.
Southerlies get up slowly, with a steady roar, like a grand orchestral piece.
Northerlies are wilder and get up quickly, then prone to throw quick punches of wind. They used to favour March.
Little mantras of experience. Sea-skipping songs.
Some of this is true on this coast. Some never was. Some of this is changing everywhere.
The character of the different winds seems to be intensifying. As if there is a magnification of their extremes.
We are definitely getting more Northerlies, worse luck.
Amongst all this climatic uncertainty, this present run of Lows feels quite nostalgic. That old Gulf Stream music. A spell of late Autumn weather. Two months late.
Better for this kind of blather than paddling.
