North Carolina Wind Ask Dave a weather question

Dave Thurlow, Host

 
Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. Today we hear from Jan DeBlieu, author of a new book titled Wind. Here she reflects upon the ever-present wind on the land she calls home.

On this thread of soil that arches twenty miles east of the mainland, every tree and shrub must be adapted to living in wind laden with salt and ferociously strong. Gusts of fifty miles an hour or more will shatter any limbs that are less pliant than rubber. We have no protection from raw weather here; we are too far out to sea.

"Where I live, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, the days are defined by wind. Without it the roar of the surf would fall silent; the ocean would become as languid as a lake. We would go about our lives in a vacuum. That's how it feels in the few moments when the wind dies: ominous, apocalyptic. As if the world has stopped turning.

On this thread of soil that arches twenty miles east of the mainland, every tree and shrub must be adapted to living in wind laden with salt and ferociously strong. Gusts of fifty miles an hour or more will shatter any limbs that are less pliant than rubber. We have no protection from raw weather here; we are too far out to sea.

From the soft stirrings that rustle leaves and grasses on summer afternoons to the biting storms that threaten life and limb, wind touches us all every day of our lives. We pay homage to its presence or absence each time we dress to go outside. We worship it with sighs, curses, and tears. "She's blowin', she is," the captain of a commercial fishing boat told me one stormy day shortly after I moved to the Outer Banks. As I struggled to keep my footing on a salt-slicked dock, I had to agree. Thereafter I made the expression part of our household vernacular. "She's blowin' she is," my husband and I joked those first winters, as Arctic-born breezes set our teeth on edge. She is, she is. Eternally, she is."

Weather Notebook commentator Jan DeBlieu comes to us from Manteo, North Carolina. Visit our website to purchase a copy of her new book Wind, at weathernotebook.org. Our show is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. Underwriting is provided by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive, with major funding provided by the National Science Foundation.