The Weathering Report #5: The Weather Underwater / Wave Weather

DATE & LOCATION OF OBSERVATIONS
Saturday 26 November 2016
North Coogee Beach, Sydney NSW

ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS
Sunny, a few clouds. Unexpected sunburns. That breeze from the sea always fools you.

FORECAST
WAVES GATHERING much interest. Plans for a dispersed weathering residency at the beach over Summer 2016.

Distant Forecast: Weathering Retreat on Grand Manan Island, North Atlantic

LATEST WEATHERING ACTIVITY
North Coogee Wave Scale, as measured on 26 November 2016:

Makes Your Knees Bend

Requires Diving Through

Causes Migration to Between-the-Flags

Pulls Your Bottom Togs Off

SATELLITE IMAGES

https://vimeo.com/255669525http://

WARNINGS CURRENT
Overheard:

“The waves — they come in waves!”

“I love the feeling of just coming out of the sea – what is it, that buoyancy you feel.”

WEATHER MAPS
Ocean weather = the wave as a relay of distant weathers; the wave here is an index of weathers not here (in part). The water and waves visiblize and sonify the weather. Waves as memories of Other Weathers.

 

LIVE READINGS
Marq DeVilliers, Windswept (2006).  In particular, we note that the last category on the Fujita Tornado Scale reads as follows:

Fujita 6, inconceivable tornado: Sustained windes of 319 to 379 mph, but no one will ever know, because all measuring devices would be destroyed, along with pretty well everything else.”

Also from DeVilliers: a “weather bomb” : “an explosive pressure change defined as a drop of 24 millibars in twenty-four hours with a central pressure below 1000 millibars” (156) as in:

“The combination was enough to turn the new system – Ivan Redux – into a weather bomb, which as we have seen is a slightly hysterical though still technically rigorous term, defined as a system that is already at less than 1000 millibars when it drops a further 24 millibars in twenty-four hours” (284) .

Future reading: James Hamilton Patterson, The Sea and Its Thresholds

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