A wind like a child at a church organ

Let me share with you some further nuggets from The Perfect Storm - - from the book, that is, and not necessarily included in…

Let me share with you some further nuggets from The Perfect Storm - - from the book, that is, and not necessarily included in the film based on it. Sebastian Junger's narrative is a cornucopia of weather serendipity; the film may be that as well for all I know, but I have not had an opportunity to see it yet. The wind has music. You can hear it in the woods as the breezes pass around a myriad of twigs and branches, creating eddies that produce notes that vary widely in their pitch and volume.

The resulting medley ranges from the friendly rustle of the leaves on a summer's day to the often plaintive murmur of a giant oak; from the sibilant sigh of a single conifer to the loud wailing dirge of a forest of the larger pines.

A wire stretched before the wind will also make a sound. It disturbs the flow of air, causing it to break up into a sequence of little eddies that are carried on downstream.

These "flutterings" of the air are sometimes fast enough to be heard by the human ear as a musical note.

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The flutter frequency increases with the speed of the wind, thus increasing the pitch of the audible note, and decreases the greater the diameter of the wire.

Sometimes, if the wind is strong enough and the eddy-frequency is close to that of the natural frequency of the wire itself - the rate at which it would oscillate on its own if plucked and then released - the alternating variations in pressure on either side of the wire cause it to vibrate.

This vibration is not necessary for sound to be produced, but when present it enhances the volume and makes the sound more persistent by prolonging it during lulls in the wind when the sound might otherwise momentarily die away.

And this brings us to The Perfect Storm.. According to Junger:

"Fishermen say they can gauge how fast the wind is - and how worried they should be - by the sound it makes against the wire stays and outrigger cables. A scream means the wind is around Force 9 on the Beaufort Scale, forty or fifty knots. Force 10 is a shriek. Force 11 is a moan. Over Force 11 is something fishermen don't want to hear".

But he talked to one who had heard it nonetheless. Hurricane Force in the rigging of a ship, said his informant, was a sound such as one "never heard before, a deep tonal vibration like a church organ. There was no melody though; it was a church organ played by a child."