Downwind Thoughts

It has been raining in Lawton and once again the road past our house has turned into a river; this enables me to claim that sometimes we have a waterfront property. On the far bank of the road/river, there is a park that stretches perhaps a hundred yards down to Squaw Creek, usually a narrow trickle at the bottom of a ditch that runs through the center of the town. With heavy rain, the creek swells and fills the ditch from edge to edge, leading me to wonder if it will overflow one day and inundate the park and our house.

This does not seem likely, however; we have had periods of very heavy rainfall since my arrival in the States and so far the creek has never managed to fill the ditch completely. I confess to a slight feeling of disappointment at this. If I am ever to have a personal story of assault by America's dramatic weather, it seems that this will probably come through a tornado, rather than a flood.

In my post on Hurricane Katrina, I made this statement: "Sometimes it seems that there is no part of this country that does not have huge weather." I then went on to poke a little fun at British weather, suggesting that it is hardly weather at all when compared to the American version. This is one of my generalizations, of course, and the fact is that, just occasionally, Britain can surprise one with unusually violent weather.

Thinking back to Katrina and the television pictures of reporters braving the storm to show us the power of the wind, I am reminded of a time when I experienced a gale of similar strength in Britain.

In those days I was part of a small team that would take the kids of our church youth group for a vacation in Wales. Every year we rented a cottage in the village of Rhyd-Ddu (pronounced Reed-Thee, although the kids called it Riddely-Doo) at the base of Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in Britain south of Scotland, and used it as our base for various energetic expeditions. That included climbing Snowdon once, visits to the beaches on the coast, hectic games in the pine forests that cover the foothills of the mountains, and generally tramping around, trying to wear out the kids but getting exhausted ourselves instead.

On one particularly windy and overcast day, it was decided to climb Moel Eilio, a mountain connected to Snowdon by a long ridge, then walk along the ridge to a point where we could descend to the village again. Two of the adults would drive the minibus from the base of the mountain to our expected arrival point. We were a small party of three adults and about eight kids, therefore.

The ascent of Moel Eilio is fairly easy, there being no real climbing involved; just a long slog up a steep, grass-covered rise to the summit. The wind was strong but not exceptional as we toiled upwards. But we had not taken account of how sheltered we were on that side of the mountain.

As we came over the crest of the rise and saw the cairn of stones that marked the summit, the wind hit us with full force. At that height, there was nothing to slow it down after its journey across the North Atlantic and it was powerful, stronger than any wind I have experienced before or since. Its initial impact on us was so great that we were forced to the ground, clutching at the grass to avoid being blown back down the mountain.

After recovering from that first shock, we found that we could walk into the wind, leaning into it and gritting out teeth. We staggered to the cairn and took a few group photographs that were to show hair streaming straight out from our heads and distorted faces, grimacing into the gale. There was some discussion of whether we should turn back but Dave, our intrepid leader and experienced climber, insisted that we could manage the ridge, suggesting that the wind would not be so fierce at a slightly lower altitude. We gathered ourselves for the effort and set out, plodding steadily into the teeth of the gale.

Dave was right about our ability to manage the ridge - we did. But he was wrong about the wind; it actually increased in strength as we struggled along, so much so that we were forced to join hands and walk in line to prevent anyone being blown away. The smallest child, a lad of about twelve years old, was repeatedly swept off his feet by the gusts, so that he flapped like a flag between the two adults holding his hands. At times the gusts became so strong that all of us were forced to crouch to the ground and hang on for dear life.

That ridge walk took far longer than we had expected. It would be more accurate to call it a ridge crawl, in fact. Our relief at reaching the point where we could descend to the calmer air of the valley can be imagined, but we had a good tale to tell those who awaited us.

I have no idea how fast that wind was moving. We hear that winds in a hurricane can reach 160 miles per hour or more and I doubt very much that my Moel Eilio wind came anywhere near that speed. Judging from the pictures on the television, however, it was stronger than any wind that those reporters experienced while trying to report on Katrina. I did not see any of them forced to go to ground.

It does make me wonder what it must be like to experience a wind of 160 mph, however...