The Weather Notebook: The Suête Wind

The Suête Wind
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Suêtes, a Film by Neal Livingston (25:50 min VHS), is a documentary about the hurricane force winds in North West Cape Breton Island and is available through our online catalog.
Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia is promoted as Atlantic Canada's masterpiece. A small town on this masterpiece of physical beauty is also home to a masterful wind - something locals call the southeast or the suête. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook.

"From Margaree Harbor to Bay St. Lawrence, winds southerly 50, with gusts to 130 km per hour."

That's a typical springtime weather forecast for Cheticamp, a small town in the northwest corner of Cape Breton Island and home to the suête, a springtime wind storm that can have speeds of up to 150 mph. Weather Notebook correspondent Neal Livingston visited Cheticamp and resident natural historian David Lawley:

"The mountains over in Baddeck are low and here in Cheticamp they're high so it's a slope and as the wind comes under that pressure it kind of gets squeezed in between the high mountain and the low pressure. If you can imagine water instead of air and you squeeze water like in a hose and you squeeze the hose tight it really squirts out. Well, that's what's happening here."

Once, I got blown right flat on my belly and as I was floating down the road on my belly trying to hold on with my hands, my feet would lift up off the ground and literally flap...I felt like a flag. It was a great experience. But it wasn't the commonest experience that people have in suêtelands. Most people have the experience of having their windows blown out or their car blown down the road or something more dramatic than just feeling like a leaf."

It's like few other local winds in that it occurs over a tiny area. And the residents are so used to it that, well, more about the suête tomorrow on the show.