We often walk Kona down the runway at the McBride Airfield. It is a windy place, but yesterday caught us by surprise. When we left the car and started down the tarmac, there was a slight breeze in our face, but when we got about a third of the way down the runway, suddenly a really powerful gust of wind slammed into us. It knocked me off balance and I had to reposition my footing and lean strongly into the wind to stay upright.
The rest of our walk down the runway was a struggle and we had to fight the headwind all the way, until Kona indicated to us that she had had enough, and we turned around. The wind made Kona’s head look pretty streamlined as he faced the wind.
The airport has two wind socks; a small one and a larger one. I assume that the smaller one shows the pilots the breezes, and the bigger one doesn’t come into play until the winds get stronger. The big wind sock is rarely pushed out horizontally, but it was yesterday. (Below)
Wind sure seems to be making it into the news recently. In last week’s local paper there was a photo of a neighbor’s house with it’s roof laying in the yard. That roof has been on the house for decades, and now suddenly the wind came up and took it off. In the Toronto region many residents are still without power after a derecho moved through the area knocking down trees and damaging houses. Until two years ago, I had never even heard of a derecho, (a widespread, long-lived straight-line wind storm causing tornado-like or hurricane-like destruction with its powerful winds), but I guess with all the changes to the climate, we can expect to hear about more and more of them.
The powerful gusts we experienced yesterday were nothing like a derecho, but it certainly drew our attention to the power of wind.
No comments:
Post a Comment