`Be a warm day I fancy," said Leopold Bloom to himself as he began his famous Odyssey. Had our protagonist had the advantage of being able to view a weather chart before he began his peregrinations on the morning of Thursday, June 16th, 1904, it would have shown him a deep depression centred between here and Iceland, with a brisk, mild, humid south-westerly airflow over Dublin. The forecast would have been for a rather windy day with perhaps a little drizzle, but with broken skies allowing the sun through now and then. The cloud would have been expected to thicken from the west towards evening, with rain approaching Dublin during the night.
But what about that other Odyssey, that famous epic journey of the victor of the Trojan wars? According to Homer, the weather was good when Ulysses and his fleet left Troy to sail home across the Aegean Sea to Greece, but after a few days, "Zeus blew shrill blasts and sent swollen waves, mountainous and vast".
Ulysses continues his story with a description of a violent storm: "Boreas, the north wind, provoked by Zeus, now summoned clouds against us. A ferocious tempest wrapped both land and sea; night scudded down from heaven, the winds struck our ships aslant, and the sails were ripped and tattered into strips. In fear of death we stowed our sails and rowed, and reached the coast." After three days they were able resume their journey, and thus began the exciting saga of the Odyssey.
Legend has it that in the course of his peregrinations, Ulysses arrived by chance at the Aegean island ruled by Aeolus, to whom Zeus had entrusted government of the winds. The king and Ulysses became good friends, and on his departure Aeolus arranged for a favourable breeze, and also gave Ulysses a leather sack tied with a silver string containing all the other winds in case he needed them. All went well for nine days, while Ulysses manned the helm. But just as the author of the Odyssey himself was wont to do from time to time, he nodded off, and as he slept, the crew whispered together about the mysterious bag, believing it to contain treasure given to their captain by Aeolus. Naturally they wished to have their share; the crew untied the bag, and all the winds escaped.
In the ensuing storm the ship was blown off course, and it was several weeks before normality returned. More importantly, perhaps, the winds have never been recaptured, and they wander the world causing frequent havoc to those on land and sea alike.