Today is World Meteorological Day. Since I prepare these posts several weeks in advance, I’m writing this while sheltering from Storm Eowyn, which prompted me to find ten facts about wind.
Wind is the movement of air from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. The reason wind even exists is the fact that the Sun heats the surface of the Earth unevenly. As air heats up, it rises, causing a void underneath into which cooler air will move.
"Anemos" is the Greek word for wind. This gives us the words anemology (the study of wind), anemious (a plant which grows in windy conditions) and anemometer (an instrument for measuring wind).
In Greek mythology, the anemoi were four wind gods, causing wind from the four compass points (They were called Boreas, Notus, Eurus, and Zephyrus). Other wind gods include: Vayu the Vedic and Hindu God of Wind; Njörðr (Norse wind god); Stribog (Slavic god of winds, sky and air); Fūjin (Japanese wind god); and Venti (Roman wind gods).
The word Kamikaze actually translates as “divine wind”. The term was first used for a series of typhoons that saved Japan from two Mongol fleets under Kublai Khan in 1274 and 1281. In England, the wind that thwarted the Spanish Armada was dubbed “Protestant Wind”.
Wind power now provides four per cent of the world’s energy. It’s not a new idea, though. The first house in the world to have its Electricity supplied by wind power was in Kincardineshire, Scotland in 1887; and the ancient Sinhalese of Anuradhapura and Sri Lanka used monsoon winds to power furnaces as early as 300 BCE. A Windmill was used to power an organ in the first century.
The convention for describing the direction of the wind is to call it by the direction it comes from. Therefore, a westerly or western wind is blowing from west to east.
The windiest place in the world is Antarctica, but the highest verified gust of wind was in Barrow Island, Australia on 10 April, 1996. The gust was 253 miles/408 kilometers per hour. The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System are on Neptune and Saturn.
Trade winds are steady winds flowing toward the equator, named after the 16th-century Portuguese ships which travelled east to west to trade goods. Jet streams are powerful winds blowing about ten kilometres above the earth; they were discovered by World War II fighter pilots who found their speed reduced when they flew against these winds.
Wind chill is the sensation of cold produced by the wind on exposed skin as the air motion speeds up the rate of heat transfer from the body to the surrounding atmosphere. Its values are always lower than the measured air temperature.
When there are high winds, the advice is always to keep pets indoors, but sailors of old had a superstition that storms were the result of someone shutting a Cat up indoors on shore. They also believed that the ship’s cat could start storms through magic stored in its tail, so you’d better not treat it badly. If a ship's cat fell or was thrown overboard, it was believed it would summon a terrible storm to sink the ship. If the ship survived, it would be cursed with nine years of bad luck.
See also: Fog, Rain, Snow, Hail, Lightning, Ice, Rainbows, The Beaufort Scale.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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