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The Palms of the Sky
Everything we do (in boats on the water) depends on the weather.The sky is literally in charge of our water world.
Whether sailing, cruising or moored, we tend to check the weather channel every few hours, just to hear what warnings our highly parental weather robot has for us, locally and abroad. The language is polite, formal and sometimes archaic. You must learn to listen carefully to dechipher the double negatives and turns of phrase which can be totally misleading. You might hear things like: "There is an excellent chance the that much less than all of the conditions for a really first class thunderstorm will not be met within the next 12 to 24 hours." Don't even think of listening to this clever, electronic sooth-sayer during happy hour!
Because you are listening to automated, canned speech the huge range of human nuance and inflection are absent or inadvertently misleading. Words are grouped in odd ways, which also trip the ear until you learn to listen. The monotonous, flat robot tongue, which is probably intended to be neutral, actually sends most people into a frozen zombie state and the mind wanders in self defense. Therefore, you must listen to the same broasdcast at least 3 times until you can sift
and sort the part you need. Or you may try to delegate the task to another unsuspecting crewmate. Quite often the 'noise' will just be snapped off with a promise to listen again in a few minutes.
In all fairness, we are grateful to have such a thorough coverage of the weather, complete with public service bulletins to wear sunscreen, drink water amd check on seniors to make sure they are coping in heat waves. How sweet is that? And flood warnings, although a curious concept to boaters, are also very valid when tides rise and docks disappear. All in all, a good system, that which could traumatize cif taken literally every 3 hours; but could also save your bacon if you heed that part that applies to your circumsyances.
In the meantime, here are some skies with a little extra whammy...um...skies, which when carefully observed may reveal certain factors that may or may not be taken under advisement for those embarking on or attempting to complete a course which may include a slight chop on the Intracoastal waterway or within a range of 60 miles offshore with northeast winds at 25 miles per hour and swells...
Tracking storms on radar
We are in the centre. Tracking seems to take some of the scariness away. This blog entry has been waiting in the wings for a few months. For those of you who want real time news, we're heading south tomorrow to get hauled out and scrubbed up while the skies do their stormy summer routine, without out direct participation. If all goes well we will be looking at calmer, cooler northern skies fairly soon.
Good night John-boy. Good night mary-Ellen. Sleep well... LOL
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Dorothy
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Sky Photos
Great photos. Thanks!