Thursday, November 5, 2015

Phenomenal waves and exploding lows; watching snow melt

This was all white yesterday.
Sitting here watching the snow go away. It's kind of like watching paint dry only with a negative rather than a positive outcome. After a decent snowfall last week that left 2 to 3 inches on the ground, the weather stayed cool enough to maintain the world in white. But overnight last night the temperature never went below 40, a chinook wind picked up and now there are spots of grass here and there. The last leaves in the trees blown away by the fresh wind dance across the remaining snow, like birds poking around for feed.

Of course we complain with a big snowstorm and then we complain when there's no snow, but this is getting old. It wasn't until March before there was enough snow last year to get to the East Pole. With a big expotition planned in December rain and warm temperatures in November aren't offering an optimistic outlook.  No snow, no go; it's as simple as that.

I will never call anyone a pansy 
again. These guys were under
three inches of snow for a week.
The wood stove received a good cleaning yesterday in preparation for the winter, but it won't be needed for a while after this. And the wind continues to blow.

Remember the line from Gordon Lightfoot"s "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald:" "… when the storms of November come early…?"  Well, it's early November. I heard the most frightening weather forecast in my life about one of those November storms. It came to mind today when I stumbled across a facebook post about a new boat with video about how it functioned in Sea State Five. I had not been aware of a schedule of sea states so I looked it up. Turns out there is one called the Douglas Scale which categorizes seas from 1 to 9. State five has waves 2.5 to 4 meters high. The official description of that level is "rough." What caught my eye, though was sea state 9 with the descriptive word, "phenomenal."

Imagine being at sea exposed and hearing a forecast for "phenomenal waves." That raised the memory of the most frightening weather forecast I had ever heard. We had waited patiently for a three-day weather window to cross the Gulf of Alaska in late October. It came when the forecast called for a low pressure system near Kodiak to weaken and dissipate. We took off from Valdez, sailed through Hinchinbrook Entrance and were halfway to Cape St. Elias when a new forecast came across. Within that forecast was this phrase: "… the low near Kodiak has deepened explosively." Deepened explosively! Holy Crap. Among three of us on the boat, none of us had heard that expression before. We managed to beat that storm into an anchorage in Icy Bay just east of the cape where we stayed buttoned down for two days. Even on the third day when the seas had dropped to maybe 5 or 6 feet and we went out in that chop, we only made 50 miles in nine hours because the temperature had dropped into the teens and the boat started icing up from the spray.

We kept going slower and slower until we finally made Yakutat where we had to sail over the bar in breaking waves with a very top-heavy boat. We stayed there another couple of days knocking ice off the boat and rearranging the cargo to provide better stability.

Sometimes when a storm blows through here, memories come up about those trips and about those souls currently out there on the ocean when "the storms of November" come early, even if that is a Great Lakes condition. Exploding lows and phenomenal seas are just that whether it's salt water or fresh water and the dangers are the same. But the warm winds that come with them across the land mass do nothing except frustrate Alaskans waiting for snow. Even so, I guess I'd rather be watching snow melt than getting pounded by phenomenal waves in an exploding low pressure system. The stories aren't nearly as good, though.

The Douglas Scales
State of the sea (wind sea)[edit]
Degree
Height (m)
Description
0
no wave
Calm (Glassy)
1
0–0.10
Calm (rippled)
2
0.10–0.50
Smooth
3
0.50–1.25
Slight
4
1.25–2.50
Moderate
5
2.50–4.00
Rough
6
4.00–6.00
Very rough
7
6.00–9.00
High
8
9.00–14.00
Very high
9
14.00+
Phenomenal

Swell[edit]
Degrees
Description
0
No swell
1
Very Low (short and low wave)
2
Low (long and low wave)
3
Light (short and moderate wave)
4
Moderate (average and moderate wave)
5
Moderate rough (long and moderate wave)
6
Rough (short and heavy wave)
7
High (average and heavy wave)
8
Very high (long and heavy wave)
9
Confused (wavelength and height indefinable)

If you are interested in seeing where this happened there is a map on this story.  Singin' them songs about them storms at sea  Cape St. Elias is at the tip of the narrow island that sticks out in the gulf between Hinchinbrook and Yakutat. Ice Bay is just to the east of the cape. Incidentally, the waves in this story I now know were officially "phenomenal."


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