Dec 12 2021 - Niagara Winds

 

Poor Millie was driven berserk by the winds last evening.  She loves to chase leaves so likes a windy day.  But the sound of the winds was overwhelmingly stimulating for her.  She ran outside, then inside, barking and barking, repeating this continuously.  The headlines today say "howling winds lashed Ontario."  And in the US it was "night of devastating tornadoes." This is the season of storms around the Great Lakes - Lake Ontario gets its greatest waves.  In some places the winds were up to 100 km/h.   I think of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald which sunk November 10 1975 on Lake Superior.  It was a big ship - 729 feet long. It was the largest ship to sink on the Great Lakes.  The cause was never figured out and there was no distress signals before she sank.  All 29 crew members died.  It inspired Gordon Lightfoot's hit song, and caused increased regulations and practices for Great Lakes shipping.   We have our own story of a car in the water above the American side of Niagara Falls. A car was driven into the river on the American side on Wednesday and it went over the falls in the high winds in the night.   It was reported that a woman drove her car into the river which got to the rapids just above the American Falls, and lodged on rocks close to the edge.  The Coast Guard took on the formidable task of rescue. Can you imagine the U.S. Coast Guard swimmer descending by cable from a hovering helicopter?  He landed on top of the vehicle, climbed in through its window and rescued the person who was already dead.  It is worth watching the dramatic video  HERE  - you can see how dangerous the winds are. The water level in the Niagara River had jumped by 20 inches in the night as the strong winds pushed Lake Erie water downstream: the amount of water going over the Falls  increased by 50% in the night taking the car with it.

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High Rising to the Winds

One Yonge Street is where the Toronto Star building is.  The SkyTower condo development is planned for the site, and will be the tallest condo building in Canada.  It will be 95 stories high - 307 metres.  The underground PATH will connect to it.  That's important as it is a very windy area at the foot of Yonge Street at Lake Ontario. I got to wondering about the winds there.  I had a dream that I was in the new One Yonge Street complex - and it was so windy we couldn't hear each other, and then the building started to sway, and finally  windows started to get blown out of the building. Are these scenarios possible?  Will the building move noticeably in the wind? The answer turns out to be Yes - buildings will sway.  The tallest apartment building in the US is in NYC.  It is 420 metres on prestigious Park Avenue and sways 4 to 5 feet.  The advice is that if you get seasick don't buy an apartment here (even if you have the $95 million that the apartments cost). I wonder how windy it will be around the towers.  To find out how windy it gets at 305 metres above ground, one retrieves the pilot's guide for aviation weather.  The issues at ground level are well-documented.  Buildings with square corners are culprits - there is an acceleration of wind with a downdraught effect around the side of the buildings with square corners.  And that's not accounting for the high winds off Lake Ontario at the foot of Yonge Street.   Then next issue I find out about the factor of cold  air microclimates. As the air at higher altitudes is colder, it can create chillier micro-climates when downdraught from skyscrapers reaches street level. This can be welcome during hot spells, but less so in winter. And, as buildings get higher, the speed of air hitting them rises, increasing ground winds below.  One tower in London England creates ground-level wind speeds up to 80 miles per hour and in 2011 lifted a truck off the ground and it came down and crushed a pedestrian. What else can happen?  Tall buildings can block radio signals.  The CN Tower is known for its great radio signals because it is so tall - 553.34 metres high. The actual microwave receivers are 305 metres from the ground.  (Did you know that the tower can sway 6 feet from the centre-line in strong winds?  Even the Sky Pod where tourists go can sway 3 feet). The scenario in my dream -  windows 'defenestrating' from buildings - can this be real? "In February 1988, Chicago's Sears Tower began shedding sheets of glass as wind speeds reached up to 70 miles per hour. For hours, some falling windows shattered other windows on their way down while others soared as far as a block away before crashing to the ground. This was not the first nor last time the building lost windows to wind." And here's a scenario I hadn't foreseen - the reflected and channeled sunlight scenario.  During construction of the Walkie-Talkie Tower in London, it raised temperatures on the streets below, melting plastic components of a parked vehicle, lit a rug on fire in a nearby structure. A reporter was able to fry an egg on the street.  That was during construction, so it has been solved with a non-reflective film.  Its new nickname is 'Fryscraper', and is considered a work of 'Arsontecture'. Our picture today comes from our visit to the National Art Gallery in the spring.

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November's Witches and Big Blows

The month of November is the stormiest on the Great Lakes.  The Witch of November is the name given to the strong winds that blow across the vast waters in Autumn.  It came yesterday night for Halloween and it howled across the Grimsby landscape.  The winds across the lakes can reach hurricane levels.  This accounts for ships sinking in Lake Ontario in November. Waves of up to 30 feet have swamped and overturned ships in the biggest storms. On the west coast the winds are known as Big Blows.  They form as cyclonic windstorms.  Cyclonic sounds ominous, doesn't it?  These storms have caused bridges to fail as well as ships to sink.  So many that it is named the graveyard of the Pacific.  More than 2,000 vessels have sunk since 1800. What made me think of this?  Port Dover on Lake Erie is flooded at record levels. There's video of a truck driving through water that covers the normally long stretch of sandy beach.  I don't think anyone is going to use the telephone booth stranded out there.  You can see the video HERE.  Something I notice is that it is typically a truck driving through the flood waters with its engine just above the water level. It is normal for water levels oscillate back and forth in the lake - and one and a half feet is a typical level. But there this is something called isostatic rebound.   What is this?  Here's the answer from the International's Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board: Overall, isostatic rebound, which is the process whereby the earth’s crust is slowly adjusting to the lack of the weight of the glaciers from the last ice age, affects the north shore as well as the south shore of Lake Ontario. In general, the west end of the lake is sinking relative to the outlet, the St Lawrence River. Isostatic rebound means slightly deeper water for the northwest shore (15 cm) and for the southeast shore (4 cm) for the same given water level compared to 100 years ago. So on the water theme, here is the Folly Waterfalls at Villa Eyrie.  I felt it was mismatched with the path in front and bistro table and chairs.  However, the moody picture with just the building waterfall shows off its eccentric style which is most creative and interesting.

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Lake Check

November is the month of storms on Lake Ontario.  So if we go to the International Lake Ontario - St. Lawrence River Board website - ijc.org and the weekly regulation summary, it says that the outflow is expected to be the what's in the plan. For the week ending Wed Nov 1 2017 the reading was 74.84 m (245.54 ft) and the average this time of year is 74.56m (244.62 ft).  So it looks like about a foot above last year's levels.  We have a strong wind warning in effect.  With a weather buoy located in Grimsby, we can look at our readings.  The current conditions say that the wave height is 0.1 metres, while other places, such as South Georgian Bay have wave heights of 1.0 metres.  I hadn't realized that there is a temperature measurement in Grimsby - we're at air temperature of 12 Celsius and water temperature of 13C. There are colour charts of the Grimsby Buoy at  windfinder.com. Our spring and autumn lake 'breezes' delay the onset of frost.  This would be of note for our  wine harvest.  It began in September, and concludes in November when later season Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon are picked. Of course the ice wines wait for the frozen temperatures of minus 8 Celsius.  Our pictures were taken last weekend with those 'breezes' quickly moving the brooding clouds past vineyards and fields. The large tractor in the vineyard is a mechanical picker.