I monitor the progress of the storms in Ireland from a distance of a thousand miles or more. Here in this sheltered valley of the Rhine, where even a gentle breeze is something quite unusual, I think of the great waves crashing in on the East Pier at Dun Laoghaire, and of Samuel Beckett's memorable words from Krapp's Last Tape inscribed thereon:
Great granite rocks
The foam flying up in the light of the lighthouse
And the wind-gauge spinning
Like a propeller
Clear to me at last . . .
And it occurs to me as I share vicariously in the excitement of those distant gales that perhaps I bear more than a passing resemblance myself to that shabby, ageing Krapp attempting to recapture, by listening to lengthy recordings of his youthful alter ego, the intensity of his personal Auld Lang Syne. Let me play for you the tape I call "What is a gale?"
When the wind is sufficiently strong to make small trees in leaf begin to sway, and to cause little crested wavelets on an inland lake - say 20 to 30 m.p.h. or so - we call it "fresh". It is "strong", however, when large trees sway in the wind, when wires overhead begin to whistle, and when it is difficult to walk against the pressure of the moving air.
When the wind, meteorologically speaking, is somewhat stronger than that "strong", the terms used to describe it are taken directly from the Beaufort scale. "Gale force" winds start at 40 m.p.h. and, by definition, are strong enough to break small branches from a tree, and over the sea to generate waves of quite considerable height.
When meteorologists speak of "strong gales", or "severe gales", a wind of 50 m.p.h. or more can be expected. And with "storm force" winds, we begin to think of structural damage and the possibility of falling trees: specifically the term "storm" describes a wind of Force 10 or 11 on the Beaufort scale, ranging from, say, 55 to 70 m.p.h.
But all these descriptions refer to the mean, or average, speed of the wind. Superimposed on this average, however, may be short bursts of even greater strength. A "gust" is a sudden but very short-lived rise in speed, a very transient phenomenon where the wind rises suddenly and then quickly reverts to near its original strength. It is the so-called "violent" gusts that really do the damage during a period of stormy weather, occasions when the wind may rise momentarily to speeds of 70 or 80 m.p.h., or even higher.