SNOW Falling on Cedars by David Guterson provides an interesting insight into the life of the rural Japanese community on the western seaboard of the United States. It also includes some very nice descriptions of the weather along the Pacific coast near Seattle - weather which is often very similar to our own. The following passage, for example, give or take a tree or two, might well describe an Irish autumn.
"It was a cloudless day, of the sort San Piedro rarely saw in September. This year there'd been an early string of them though - a day of deep heat but with an onshore breeze that tossed the leaves in the alders and even ripped a few loose to fall earthward. One minute it was silent, the next a rush of wind came up from off the water smelling of salt and seaweed and the roar of the leaves in the trees was as loud as waves breaking in on the beach."
Television weather forecasters faced with such conditions must be less lyrical than this, but they have to paint the picture with an equal clarity. They are helped, of course, by graphics. Some show the wind speed plotted on a little circle, with an arrow to indicate the direction from which, or perhaps towards which, the breeze will blow. Others are more adventurous: they may depict the wind, for example, as a broad river of arrows sweeping along in the general direction of the flow of air, with thick arrows telling of a gale, and slender shafts predicting just a gentle breeze.
But words are also needed. Winds of less than about 10 m.p.h., enough perhaps to stir small twigs and leaves upon a tree, are usually described as "light". The phrase "moderate winds" indicates, say, 10 to 20 m.p.h., when dust and loose paper will be blown around. "Fresh" winds are stronger still: the speed range is 20 to 30 m.p.h. or so, and they are sufficient to make small trees in leaf begin to sway, and to cause little crested wavelets on an inland lake. And when the wind is described as "strong", large trees will sway in the wind, overhead wires whistle, and it will be difficult to walk against the force of the moving air.
For stronger winds than "strong", the terms are taken directly from the Beaufort Scale. "Gale Force" winds start at 40 m.p.h., and are strong enough to break small branches from a tree, and to cause high waves to develop on the sea. Higher up the scale are "severe gale" and "storm force" winds - at which stage we must begin to think in terms of structural damage, and to watch out for falling trees.