"Who has seen the wind?"
Westerlies, Easterlies, North Winds and South Winds - a reflection on our relationship with the wind
I stepped out of the door this morning and was immediately struck by an absence - the wind that had been blowing strongly all week had stilled.
I will admit to having a love-hate relationship with the wind. A blustery walk on an autumn morning, well wrapped up with hat and scarf is energising and invigorating. Flying a kite on a windy day at the beach is still something I love to do. Not being a fan of being too hot, I will follow any trace of a cooling breeze in summer.
But when the winds blow strongly, I dislike the feeling of pressure at the base of my skull. The alarming creaks and groans of trees bending and swaying. How the sound rushes and builds ominously, even when I’m safe inside, reminding me that the wind can be an incredibly destructive force that rips and ruins, tearing away life.
However, I also love the plethora of synonyms for wind. There are those that denote the strength of the wind:
breath, breeze, draught, puff, flutter, wafting, gust, blow, blast, gale, hurricane, cyclone, tempest;
the direction:
Westerlies, Easterlies, North winds, South winds, whirlwind;
and the specific geography of where the winds can be found:
trade winds, zephyr, mistral, typhoon, berg, bora, chinook, etesian, foehn, haboob, harmattan, khamsin, levant, leveche, scirocco.
Here in Britain we also have any number of dialect words for the wind, although this is particularly true in Scotland and Yorkshire, which seem to have more dialect words describing particular types of wind:
brissling, faffle, peerching, waft, hoolie, bleacha, custard wind, cat's nose, howlin, airt, gouling, kittle, lunkieness, ramballiach
The large number of words that exist to describe this element give testament to our enduring fascination with, and dependence on, weather throughout the ages.
There’s a brilliantly descriptive folk saying relating to the four different prevailing winds:
“When the wind is in the east, it’s good for neither man nor beast.
When the wind is in the north, the old folk should not venture forth.
When the wind is in the south, it blows the bait in the fishes’ mouth.
When the wind is in the west, it is of all the winds the best.”
When the wind comes from the east, blowing to the west (an easterly), it means that there is an approaching low pressure system bringing poor weather (good for neither man nor beast). A north wind brings cold air down to the northern hemisphere from the polar regions (so old folk should stay inside where it is warm), whilst a south wind brings warm (but humid) conditions to Britain (that are presumably good for fishing!) Westerlies (coming from the west and blowing towards the east) bring fair weather with mild temperatures and dry air. (Another childhood reference for you - Mary Poppins is blown in on the East Wind when the Banks family are in need and stays until the wind changes to a Westerly, at which point the family are happy and united, flying their kites).
Why do we have winds?
In the most simple terms, wind is the movement of air that happens when high and low weather pressure systems meet. The sun warms the earth, which radiates up into the atmosphere - but because our planet is made-up of mostly ocean with polar ice caps and our land masses aren't uniformly flat - this heating effect is uneven. Add in to that the earth's rotation and you get the conditions where some places experience high pressure and some low - and the air wants to move between them in an attempt to even things out. This creates both large-scale global atmospheric circulation patterns, as well as more localised pockets of high and low pressure and associated winds.
The Met Office has a great little video that explains this in more detail:
One of the most interesting things about the wind from the human perspective is, of course, of the four elements (earth, fire, water and air) it is the one that we can’t see - we can only feel its effects. In many ways this makes it more mysterious and elusive as a concept as well as a physical reality.
I’ve always loved this poem by Christina Rossetti, describing just this:
WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND? by Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
The wind as metaphor
The fact that the wind cannot be seen but can take on so many forms, means that it appears frequently in literature as a metaphor to describe an uncontrollable or unstoppable force, or as an omen or portent of future events (an ill wind blowing, or a wind of change, for example). Sometimes it can act as a device to describe the feelings of a character, as well as just to set a scene and create a particular atmosphere.
Some of my favourite books include evocative descriptions of the wind. As a teenager, I fell in love with Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, in part for the doomed love story, but mostly for the depiction of the wild natural environment that shapes the characters and their ill-fated choices. The ever-present wind weaves through the novel, creating different moods and settings:
“Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.”
“There was no sound through the house but the moaning wind, which shook the windows every now and then, the faint crackling of the coals, and the click of my snuffers as I removed at intervals the long wick of the candle.”
“I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”
This passage from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Five Orange Pips describes exactly how I feel when the wind is very strong:
All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage.
How the wind affects us
Back at the beginning of this piece, I confessed to a love-hate relationship with the wind. There are some types of windy weather that I enjoy and others that I don’t, and it would appear that I am not alone in this.
There are many references in literature to the wind affecting our mental capacity, such as this one from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."
Although there doesn't seem to have been much modern scientific research done in relation to the impact of wind on our mental and physical health, descriptions of 'evil' or' ill' winds can be found in many ancient writings as well as folk traditions from around the globe. For example, in central Europe, dry southerly winds blowing over the alps are called 'Foehns' and are associated with the malady of ‘Föhnkrankheit’ and increased suicide. Similar symptoms of mental distress and anxiety have been recorded for other seasonal winds, including the Santa Ana (California), Hamsin (Middle East), Mistral (southern France) and Sirocco (Italy).
However, seemingly not all winds have a negative effect on our health - the Dutch have a tradition of “uitwaaien” where they embrace going outside in windy weather as a form of stress release. My mother - a primary school teacher - used to find playground duty a chore on windy days as children reacted by running more quickly and shouting more loudly (often resulting in more bumps and falls, but the children were definitely enjoying themselves up until this point). There are reports of top athletes who purposefully train in windy conditions for the additional exertion required, but who also report improved mood and a lessening of nerves and anxiety - almost as if these negative feelings had been ‘blown away’.
It is possible now to live our lives almost completely insulated from the elements. One can move from house to car to office to restaurant to gym with hardly any time spent outside - but in doing so we lose another elemental connection with the natural world.
So next time that there’s a blustery day (anything from 25 - 45mph) rather than hunkering down inside, put on some appropriate clothing and get outside to enjoy the sensations of being buffeted by strong currents, of hearing the wind in your ears and engaging with how nature has adapted to bend to this force so that it is less likely to break. Definitely a useful reminder to us all!