Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Wind drought from hell.

Yep, the winds in Kingston are on the decline. Proof of climate change? Ask any windsurfer or kiter out there and they will say the same thing. It just ain't as windy as it used to be in Ktown. Not exactly a very scientific hypothesis, but damn convincing to all of us.

Windguru has been looking like this a lot lately, far too white:



Kingston is located on the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Summer conditions used to be dominated by thermal winds - characterized by crisp warm days and thermally driven winds off the lake from roughly 2-4pm. At one point in time, you might be able to count on 1-2 days of 15kts+ every week (not epic, but respectable). OK, maybe that is exaggerating a bit, but definitely more than now. I would say nowadays, those once common crisp, low-humidity summer days have become the exception, replaced by much more frequent hot humid and hazy & smoggy days - the type of conditions that don't let those thermals set up.

ARGH! is all I can say. I need my fix. Any suggestions? Perhaps time to reverse the flow of electricity TO the wind turbines.

Note, this photo (by WaveSpire) is from too long ago to mention....

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree with you on the global change. I have fond memories of great winds in Kingston in the 80s. It all seems to be gone now.

When I was young in Sydney, Australia, in the summer you could set your watch on the wind speed in the morning. There were only 2 wind directions then, and wind was guaranteed, with 300++ days of sailing in a year. Now it's all gone, there's only so much to blame on Nino and Nina and all that...