West wind

“ It is a sort of steady, persistent, overwhelming, endlessly driving downpour, which makes your heart sick, and opens it to dismal forebodings. And the stormy mood of the Easterly weather looms black upon the sky with a peculiar and amazing blackness. The West Wind hangs heavy gray curtains of mist and spray before your gaze, but the Eastern interloper of the narrow seas, when he has mustered his courage and cruelty to the point of a gale, puts your eyes out, puts them out completely, makes you feel blind for life upon a lee-shore. It is the wind, also, that brings snow. ”

“ Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or draped in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars making a diadem for his brow. Then the seamen, attentive courtiers of the weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by the mood of the master. The West Wind is too great a king to be a dissembler: he is no calculator plotting deep schemes in a sombre heart; he is too strong for small artifices ”

“ The west wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modern poetry,—at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air. ”

“ It was the South West wind that was blowing, that most blessed visitant of our isles, spite of its blusterous ways—the sweet wind from over the seas that stirs the blood to the quick flow of joyous youth again, and makes one to dance and laugh for very delight of life. ”

“ The north-west wind, on the contrary, is the wind that brings the sense of inland spaces, the smell of warm, wet earth and the fragrance of leaf mould in sweet breathing woods. It is the wind that fills the rivers and the wells and brings the fresh purifying rain. ”

“ Cape Horn is iron, and it takes masters of iron to win around from east to west.
And we make easting! This west wind is eternal. I listen incredulously when Mr. Pike or Mr. Mellaire tells of times when easterly winds have blown in these latitudes. It is impossible. Always does the west wind blow, gale upon gale and gales everlasting, else why the “Great West Wind Drift” printed on the charts! We of the afterguard are weary of this eternal buffeting. Our men have become pulpy, washed-out, sore-corroded shadows of men. ”

“ JOHN MASEFIELD
[Pg 45]
THE WEST WIND
It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
It's a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine,
Apple orchards blossom there, and the air's like wine.
There is cool green grass there, where men may lie at rest,
And the thrushes are in song there, fluting from the nest.
"Will you not come home, brother? You have been long away. ”

“ The West Wind tells us of the way how the branches spring outwards, or balance themselves, or hang like garlands in the air, and carry their leaves, or needles, or nuts; and of their ways of bending and straightening, of swaying and trembling. It tells us also, this West Wind, how the sea is lashed and furrowed; how the little waves spring up in the offing, and the big waves rise and run forward and topple into foam; how the rocks are shaken, the sands are made to hiss and the shingle is rattled up and down ”

“ It is the best of winds, gives vigour to the eyes, increases the strength, and soothes the blood and the Pittam without aggravating the bodily Vayu. The West wind:—The West wind is pure, non-slimy, dry, rough to the perception, and keen. ”

“ And all at once when their inward longing kindles into flame, (in spring the rather, since in spring their vital heat returns,) they all wheel and stand facing the West on rocky heights, and snuff the light breezes, and often without bodily union, wind-impregned, wonderful to tell, over crag and cliff and deep-sunken vale they scatter in flight not to thy springs, O East, nor to the rising of the sun, but towards the north and northwest winds, or whence the South issues wrapped in gloom and saddens heaven with his chilly rains. ”

“ The inky ragged wrack, flying before a nor'-west wind, makes you dizzy with its headlong speed that depicts the rush of the invisible air. A hard sou'-wester startles you with its close horizon and its low gray sky, as if the world were a dungeon wherein there is no rest for body or soul. ”

“ The North Wind woke her betimes next morning, and puffed himself up, and made himself so big and so strong that it was frightful to see him, and away they went, high up through the air, as if they would not stop until they had reached the very end of the world. ”

“ But when evening begins, the west wind, clad in splendor and sunset beauty as if robed for a festal eve, lifts a gleaming brow above a blithe countenance, and sends a message on darting beams across to the east wind telling him to prepare for the festive morrow to come. ”

“ When the west wind is a gentle breeze, they say he is using his injured arm. Before that, the west wind had always been so strong it was very disagreeable, because Wind-maker could use both arms. Now it is much gentler. ”

“ Once, one hot afternoon, the air took on an oppressive density, the wind died away almost to a calm, blowing fitfully from the south, while in the far west a vast dome of inky clouds, silent and portentous, uplifted, filling the horizon, swelling like a great bubble, yet seeming to have the weight of a mountain range in its mass. ”

“ In fits and starts the fog thins, and thickens again, at the will of wandering airs.
A west wind comes away, freshens, and stirs the vapour till it whips close overhead in wraiths and streamers, raises here and there a fold on the distant horizon, then dies again. Growing in vigour, the breeze returns; a gallant breath that ruffles the smooth of the sea and sweeps the round of it, routing the lingering flurries that settle, dust-like, when the mass is cleared. ”

“ It gradually becomes thicker and darker, packing in the valleys and then creeping up the heights. No sooner, however, has it reached the summit of the chain, than it is caught by the north-west wind and sent back in flying streamers, like the mare's tails we are accustomed to see in our skies presaging a change of wind, but with this difference, that these streamers are viewed from above. The north wind gathering strength, as though mustering its forces against the audacious invasion of the southern vapours, rages and blusters for several days. ”

“ Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by a faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved far away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the crucial moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence of the south-west gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, cleareyed anger of the King's north-westerly mood. ”

“ Although this wind is so very piercing in winter, yet I think the people never complain so much of cold as when the north-east wind blows; for my own part I never found the air so agreeable, let the season of the year be what it would, as with the north-west wind. The north-east wind is also cold, but it renders the air raw and damp. ”

“ S.E. winds bring rain and dirty weather invariably, and are fortunately not of frequent occurrence. It is a curious fact that while in spring and summer the east wind brings with it an icy chill, while the west winds are warm and genial, the latter in the winter time bring whatever frosty weather comes to pass, which is immediately broken up into thaw by a change in the wind to east. ”

“ Lightning flashes all around us; as the wind whirls from north-east to south-west, rain and snow-flakes become hail, half the size of peas. Thunder roars and echoes through the mountains; the mules hang their heads, and travel slowly; the thinly-clad aboriginal walks shivering as he drives the train ahead; the dark cumulus cloud seems to wrap itself around us. ”

“ Suddenly a new wind arises from the vast watery plains upon the south-west; long, fleecy streams of cloud reach out along the sky; the distant mountain-tops seem swimming in a film of haze, and the great California weather prophet—a creature upon whom the storms of adverse experience have beaten for years without making even a weather crack in the smooth cheek of his conceit—lavishes his wisdom as confidently as if he had never made a false prediction. ”

“ The south-west wind was a fair wind from the enemy’s ports, to Europe, and we kept a very bright look-out, to prevent ourselves from being run over, by some heavy ship of commerce, hurrying, with lightning speed, before wind and sea. ”

“ THE ORIGIN OF THE WINDS Tlingit
NOW Raven went off to a certain place and created West Wind. Raven said to it, “You shall be my son’s daughter. No matter how hard you blow, you shall hurt nobody.”
Raven also made South Wind. When South Wind climbs on top of a rock it never ceases to blow.
Raven made North Wind and on top of a mountain he made a house for it with ice hanging down the sides. Then he went in and said to North Wind, “Your back is white.” That is why mountains are white with snow. ”

“ And in summer and winter, from north, south, east, or west, the wind brings us news from the sea: the savor of salt, gray billows of cloud and fog, clear stark bright days following one another through a season. The southwest gales of summer beat down ripe grasses in the field and feather willow and poplar with silver; the great autumn gales go trumpeting through the land; the nor’easter sends surf thundering on the outer shore; and there are the soft moist winds that relax the high-wrought tension of humans, and melt the rigors of winter. ”

“ These belts often lie east and west rather than north and south, and we frequently have much colder or hotter weather in them than we have even several degrees to the north or to the south of them. The conditions required for one of these cold "snaps" in America appear to be a north or north-west wind of considerable breadth from west to east. As it goes to the south, its tendency is, if it reach high enough, to bring down cold air from above in the manner of the trade-winds (§ 238) ”

“ In the normal meteorological state of France and Europe, the west wind, which is the counter-current of the trade-winds that constantly blow from the east under the tropics—the west wind, I say, after having touched France and Europe by the western shores, re-descends by Marseilles and the Mediterranean, Constantinople and the Archipelago, Astrakan and the Caspian Sea, in order to merge again into the great circuit of the general winds, and be thus carried again into the equatorial current. ”

“ Northwest wind brings a short storm;
A northeast wind brings a long storm. 86Northwest Winds.
Northwest wind brings only rain showers.
If there be a change of wind from the northwest or west to the southwest or south, or else from the northeast or east to the southeast or south, expect wet weather.
If the northwest or north winds blow with rain or snow during three or four days in the winter and then the wind passes to the south through the west, expect continued rain. ”

“ SOUTH-WEST WINDS. The velocity of the surface of the earth in moving round its axis diminishes from the equator to the poles. Whence if a region of air in this country should be suddenly removed a few degrees towards the north it must constitute a western wind, because from the velocity it had previously acquired in this climate by its friction with the earth it would for a time move quicker than the surface of the country it was removed to ”

“ In the course of the afternoon the wind from north-west increased to a gale, but the air was still warm, and the sun set in a clear sky, while the heavy clouds sank to the eastern horizon where sheet lightning played incessantly until after midnight. The air brought by that wind from the north-west was so dry as to occasion a most unpleasant heat and parched sensation in the skin of the face and hands, and several men complained of headache. ”

“ The 21st the wind came northerly and overblew, so that we were constrained to bend our course south again, for we perceived that we were run into a very deep bay, where we were almost compassed with ice, for we saw very much towards the north-north-east, west, and south-west; and this day and this night we cleared ourselves of the ice, running south-south-west along the shore. ”

“ The wind being north-northeast and east three days before the sun crosses the line, then southeast by way of east, then calm on the 23d, will bring enough and stormy winds from east and west all the winter. ”

“ The winds which prevail most, both in this country and in England, are from the west. It is known that the wind blows, in our latitude, from some point west to some point east, on an average of years, nearly or quite three days out of four. These facts are familiar. The consequences resulting from them are, that our winters are colder and our summers much hotter than in England. Our latitude is about that of Oporto, yet the temperature is very different. ”

“ The east wind, by its action, increases the general motion of the sea from east to west; it also produces currents which are constant, some flowing from east to west, others from west to east; and from the east to the south-west or north-west, following the direction of the eminencies and chains of mountains at the bottom of the sea, the vallies that divide them serving as channels to these currents. The alternative winds which blow sometimes from the east, and sometimes from the south, produce also currents which change their direction at the same time with these winds. ”