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Hi John H,

I wonder whether my experience of March winds is shaped by being outdoors on 
sunny, windy days as a basis for the old saw, M'arch comes in like a lion and 
out like a lamb.'  In January and February, it's likely to be snowy when 
windy, so you don't venture outside. I sure remember vividly my ears hurting 
due to March winds.

I expect that teasing a signal out of the statistics would be difficult, but 
would certainly enjoy seeing some data.

Fred

On Sep 19, 2011, at 8:05 PM, Apache Runner wrote:

> Fred - 
> 
> I've been trying to track from memory the strength of storms versus time of 
year.    Certainly Frank's observation that the height of hurricane season on 
the US east coast is a bit before the equinox might reinforce it.   But, I 
have to say that my experience with gales and the like point to times more in 
late October and early November on the autumn end of things.  September (with 
exceptions, of course) always seems a bit calmer - but that's in the 
Boston-Philadelphia corridor, where I grew up and live.
> 
> On the spring end, yes, March is definitely windy, but both February and 
April pack some real big storms in my memory.  The tornado season is 
definitely in spring, but I'm thinking more of classic gales on the ocean 
that old mariners associated with 'equinoctial storms'. 
> 
> It's a matter of statistics, and I would be curious to see how my subjective 
experience tracks with data.
> 
> Anyway, I liked the article saying that there is *always* a major storm 
after the equinox, you only have to wait long enough.
> 
> John H.
>   
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Fred Hebard  wrote:
> In my subjective experience, the strongest non-hurricane/non-tornado winds 
of the year on land in the eastern U.S. come in March.  Those are equinoctial 
winds.
> 
> Fred Hebard
> 
> On Sep 18, 2011, at 9:40 PM, Frank Reed wrote:
> 
> > The New York Times was certainly a lot more fun back in those days when it 
was still a local paper. I enjoyed the author's excuse that sometimes the 
equinoctial storm might be 3 or 4 or even 5 months after the equinox. Now 
there's the best kind of theory: a theory that can never be wrong. Of course 
there are indeed frequent storms relatively near the autumnal equinox on the 
Atlantic coast of the US since that is close to the peak for land-falling 
tropical cyclones. It's a coincidence that helped reinforce the old legend.
> >
> > Lasting into the 19th century there was also a belief that the change of 
the Moon (Full or New) was associated with storms and changes in the weather. 
Even Bligh on the Bounty in 1788 proposed to wait for the change of the Moon 
after they had been beaten back by gales near Cape Horn.
> >
> > -FER
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