Sunday, May 07, 2006

Wind Switch

Weather forecast for Sunday afternoon.
2pm 3 knots NNW
5pm 2 knots SSE

So let's get this straight. We will start with not enough wind to race, then during the afternoon the wind will get even lighter and shift 180 degrees? Or is it that with a massive high pressure area anchored over New England, the weather gurus don't have a clue which way the wind will blow so they're just hedging their bets?

In any case, unless the forecast is totally wrong, this doesn't look very hopeful for racing. Wish there was some switch to turn on more wind.

And now for something completely different...

Seems like someone has invented a "wind switch" that might work to reduce wind strength at the opposite end of the Beaufort scale. It's a neat idea to reduce the intensity of hurricanes. The proposal is to deploy 6000 pumps spaced 50-100 meters apart in a 100 km wide band stretching across the Gulf of Mexico. Each pump would be attached to a 1000 meter long, 1.5 meter diameter flexible tube moored to the ocean bottom. When a hurricane approaches, the array would pump cold water from deep in the ocean to cool the surface waters and thereby reduce the intensity of the hurricane.

1 comment:

Tim Coleman said...

If you find a wind switch please tell me about it 'cause I want one too!

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