The Weather Notebook: Life With the Suête

Life With the Suête
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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.
Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. In the town of Cheticamp, Nova Scotia, a southeast wind that every so often roars down out of the mountains is a part of the town's history. It's called a suête. During a suête, winds can reach up to 150mph.

Weather notebook correspondent Neal Livingston visited some of the residents of Cheticamp on the Cape breton shoreline, where the residents of Cheticamp, have to learn to adjust lives to the strong suête winds. Michel Battet:

"There's a lot of barns that are very close to the house or actually connected to the house and one of the reasons is because of the winds. During a good southeast wind, the people would have to get into the barn to feed the animals or milk the cows or whatever and if the barn was far away they'd have to go all the way outside. So they just started to connect the barns to the houses."

And you can tell why from the stories. Here's Rosie Grace:

"My grandfather stood here one day and he looked to me and said '20 minutes' he said and it's going to be a big suête. He goes, 'you shouldn't go out skating on the lake today'. And, you know, when you're a kid, typical child, you just think it's a beautiful day, what is he talking about.

So we didn't listen and we did go on the lake skating and sure enough shortly after here comes this big gush of wind. It came out of nowhere and the wind was just blowing us towards the part of the lake that doesn't freeze, so it was quite dangerous. Fortunately some of our neighbors scooped us up and took us home. Believe me, we listened to our grandfather forever after that."

To purchase a wonderful video about the suête winds in Cheticamp, visit our website at mountwashington.org or give us a call at 1-888-RAIN-001 and leave a message with your address. Thanks to Subaru and the National Science Foundation.