Another Voice | 28 March 2009

When I was a boy I never really understood strong winds, still less storms. I’m not sure I do now.

This was not due to complete ignorance of meteorology. Something of a star pupil at geography (why the weather was geography rather than physics baffled me), I absorbed with interest and some degree of comprehension the explanation of wind. Warm air, heated by the sun, would rise; and cooler air would waft in to take its place. Thus (I appreciated) a light breeze might waft from the cool sea to the warmer land during the day; but, by night, as the land grew cooler than the ocean, the airflow would reverse and a breeze blow from land to sea. All around the globe, as air pressures dropped or rose in one place or another, air would be sucked from one place to another to rebalance. And Mr van Aswegan demonstrated how rain was made when bodies of warm, damp air were caused to rise, and cool, and precipitate their moisture.