NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Silicon Sea: Beaufort Wind Scale
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2002 Oct 15, 20:32 -0700
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2002 Oct 15, 20:32 -0700
On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, at 03:00 PM, Robert Eno wrote: > What is the practical value of the beaufort scale of wind force? Why > is it > not sufficient to simply reckon the wind speed in knots and leave it at > that? The clever idea behind the Beaufort scale is to have a memorable set of conditions that usually correspond to a certain wind speed in knots. We do not all have wind speed indicators around, but we can all look at conditions and make a quick informed judgment of conditions if we can use the indicators that Beaufort came up with. We can then report upon conditions with some decent degree of accuracy, without measuring instruments, and without distorting the truth. (We all tend to exaggerate the size of waves and wind speeds when we are out in a gale or better.) Dan
