Offshore Storm
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook. Weather events, like the first heavy snowfall of the year or a heavy summer rain, can alter the landscape in dramatic ways. For Ireland commentator, Chuck Kruger, a storm off Cape Clear Island transformed a familiar harbor into another place.
"Suspicious of the southeasterly at work, and aware of roar, I venture outside to scan Clear Island's mile-long South Harbor. Despite almost daily exploration of this stretch of sea for the last half-dozen years, I fail to spot my landmarks. It's as if I've been transported.
West, in the middle of the harbor, waves rise forty feet into the air, collide with each other, brilliant white plumes blasting skyward in sudden dazzles of sunlight that break through black squalls. Then these monsters begin breaking, cascading down, and, as they approach the shore, rear up again and cover cliffs and lower pastures. Occasionally a wave rams into a cave where Spanish smugglers held court in Ireland two hundred years ago, a reverberating, thonic shudder shaking the very atmosphere as part of the giant comes to a precipitate halt.
The pier breakwater works as effectively as a wicker fence at halting a stampeding bull. Waves burst over it as though it isn't there. Others curl along the entire length of the hundred-yard pier.
That night, in the island pub, a fisherman confides in me that he hasn't seen waves like these since 1971. But, sure, isn't that always the way when a storm begins in the Bay of Biscay?"
Chuck Kruger is an author and storyteller from Cape Clear Island, County Cork Ireland. Thanks to Subaru and the National Science Foundation.
Related Links