The Weather Notebook: Tying Down the Wind

Tying Down the Wind
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

What is wind?

"Wind is really nature's attempt to achieve equilibrium."

That's writer Eric Pinder whose book, Tying Down the Wind," tries to answer that question.

"the sun is heating one side of earth while the other is in darkness. The earth is rotating and its tilted on its axis so the sun is heating the Earth unevenly and wind is trying to smooth everything out., but never really succeeds.

Eric Pinder lives in Berlin, New Hampshire not far from Mount Washington the highest peak in the Northeast and one reputed to have the world's worst weather. It's here , that Pinder was bitten by the weather bug and the towering peak.

I think the fascination of Mt. Washinagton isn't so much the extremes as the variety. One day you can have.winds at 130 mph and hailstones hitting the windows at 100 MPH, dense fog, intense icing and then the next day it could be calm and clear and you can see 130 miles. Sometimes you get a spectacular undercast and that's when all the clouds are below the summits and you have nothing but blue sky up above, but down below is a rippling sea of clouds and summit is poking up through clouds sort of like an island.

That's writer Eric Pinder whose book Tying Down the Wind is in bookstores around the country. For more on his book and Mount Washington, breeze on over to our website at weatherntoebook.org. Our program is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported by the National Science Foundation.