When the winds blow

IN my younger years, often spent on mountain tops in high winds, driving rain and snow blizzards in the United Kingdom, and then later in life driving through torrential monsoonal rains in Sabah and Sarawak, I thought that I had experienced all that the heavens had managed to heap on me. My most recent adventure exceeded all of these.

Early on a Sunday morning in the middle of last month, the open windows of my hotel room in Italy clattered and shook. From my balcony, at a height of 300 metres above sea level, I had clearly observed the Mediterranean Sea and local coastal villages below on the Italian border with France only the day before. The fork lightning illuminated the darkened skies and the thunder rumbles got ever closer.

The winds increased to near hurricane force and the rain poured down. It took all my strength to put my shoulders into closing the windows and to release the outside window shutters. A good seafaring term sprang readily to my mind: “Batten down the hatches!” With lashing rain against another smaller window, visibility was reduced from 10km to less than a metre. The local electricity supply was curtailed for about six hours as trees collapsed and brought down power cables.

Several hours later, when the electricity supply was restored, I ventured out onto my balcony and cleared the Maritime pine tree twigs and branches and reclaimed the solid iron deck chairs that had been turned over and pushed for three metres by this wind’s strength. Slowly the sun burnt through the clouds and I could again look down onto the sea. The day before, the azure blue of the sea had been outstanding. After this storm, which downloaded 25 millimetres of rain every 10 minutes, the sea below me was discoloured by plumes of brownish sediments in delta — like formations as the local rivers took their course. The villages below me in the deeply incised valleys took the full force of the storm and flooding and landslides were inevitable.

Interestingly, the day before this storm in Ventimiglia, fog had invaded the land from the sea relatively early in the morning. This type of fog is called advection fog — when an onshore moisture-laden wind from over a warm sea hits a cold landmass and condenses. According to my Italian friends such fog is the precursor of heavy rain.

The Levanter

The forceful winds coming from a southeasterly direction that I experienced on that Sunday, I recognised as a seasonal local wind, known in Italian as Levante. It is a funnelled wind, often generated between May and October, and caused by depressions (cyclones) in the Mediterranean Sea sucking warmer air in from the Middle East and Northern Africa coast to finally deposit its accumulated moisture over colder landscapes and hill sides of Northwest Italy as the air chills and condenses.

Water bombers

A few days earlier at Villefranche-sur-mer, I photographed six military seaplanes descend from the Les Alpilles (the mountains behind the coastal town) to scoop up seawater in the bay to water bomb fires raging on hillside forests at Menton Garavon. Every 10 minutes, this fleet of aircraft swept over the sea (and this continued for nearly 12 hours) to distribute water on the hillsides only 40km away. These forest fires were threatening hillside homes. Several days later, I visited Menton to observe the severity of the fires and to record the extent of the damage to former hillside vegetation — a charred landscape.

Such forest fires have recently raged in California in an almost identical landscape and torrential rainstorms have flooded Utah. Malaysia and Singapore have been severely hit by haze with unhealthy recordings on the Air Pollutant Index (API). Schools have closed in both countries and on the Singaporean Pollutant Standard Index (PSI), readings of 320 have exceeded the worst winter figures for Beijing.

The 2014 Transboundary Haze Pollution Act could, and should, lead to massive fines imposed on Indonesian companies in Sumatra and Kalimantan for farm and plantation burning. The Indonesian government should take full credit for taking the perpetrators of illegal burning to task with fines and possible imprisonment. Singapore has already served five Indonesian companies with international court action.

Our health is affected by such atmospheric pollution and is recorded by hospital admissions with people suffering from breathing problems, but I genuinely wonder how much research has been done on the effect of prolonged haze conditions on local plant and animal life?

El Nino

There is no doubt that the severity of this year’s El Nino event is truly turning normal local climates upside down. Add to this climate change, and this year into 2016, we seem to be in the lap of the gods. Never before at this time in early October, in Southwest England, have I seen holly trees laden with red berries. Normally I associate holly berries with Christmas time in December. Local folklore suggests that I am going to experience a severe, snowbound winter. I shall wait and see.

Fortunately my log stores are full to capacity so at least I shall have heat from my log burning stove. Next year, I am considering installing ceiling fans and even air conditioning to cope with rising summer temperatures.

I well remember the 1997-1998 El Nino effect whilst visiting Mount Kinabalu National Park in Sabah. Cinders and soot from illegal forest fires fell on my bald head as I photographed overhanging hibiscus flowers. Let us hope that the present El Nino event does not damage the Malaysian national flower or the bougainvillea that bedeck Singapore’s road-bridges. The hibiscus plants add much colour to the public gardens in Southern France and here, indoors, in Southwest England, my bougainvillea is in full bloom.

In a recent conversation with a Malaysian friend, she recalled describing bougainvillea as the paper flower. Paper, like the flowers of the bougainvillea, is a fragile substance. Our planet’s atmosphere is equally fragile and the more that we can do to slow the rate of climate change nationally and internationally, the more we and our successors will benefit.

For details of the interpretation of API readings look for The Tired Eye column in thesundaypost on Sept 20 entitled ‘What exactly does the API tell us?’ and Nature Matters on April 26 entitled ‘Remember the haze?’.