Her Name Will Be Faith (7 page)

"And that tells you what the weather is going to
do?"

"Sure. Obviously, if Station
A, five hundred miles away, reports heavy
cloud and rain at, say, 8.00 am in the morning, and
Station B, three hundred miles away, reports blue skies at that hour, and then
at ten
o'clock
Station A reports clearing skies and Station B increasing cloud,
you can assume a rain storm is
approaching from A to B. If at ten o'clock Station A still reports cloud and
rain, when it is also being reported from
Station B, then it is obviously a pretty big storm system.
That's pure
observation.
But the isobars tell us what wind speeds to expect. When
the different lines are well
spaced, a shallow gradient, we know the wind
flow will be light. When the lines appear close
packed, a steep gradient, strong winds are indicated. This is very important to
ships at sea, which
may
be travelling down a pressure gradient themselves. It is an axiom,
for instance, that if a ship's
barometer drops as much as three millibars
in any hour, the crew should prepare for a gale. In the
sub-tropics, where
there
is very little pressure movement at all, a drop of three millibars in
one hour can very well indicate a
hurricane in the vicinity. But nowadays,
of course, we have many more sophisticated ways of
telling the
weather..."

Jo was fascinated. Not only by the
subject itself, which she had never
really considered in any depth before, but by the total
knowledge and
expertise which flowed from
the man. He
was
an expert. As well as being
one of the most attractive men she had ever met. But that was dangerous
thinking
in her present state of mind.

"So," he was saying,
"back in the days when radio was first developed,
and as accurate weather forecasts
became important to shipping, and
sport, and of course aviation, and folks realized that
long-range forecasting
could even save lives, a whole series of these weather reporting
stations
I was
talking about were set up. There were even ships at sea, whose
business was to maintain a
certain position and do nothing but report on
the weather. So a regular series of observations
could be obtained from
very far away, and an idea of what was happening there fitted into an
overall picture of what the
weather was doing everywhere else, in what
direction and how fast the systems were moving, what wind
strengths
could be
anticipated, etcetera. But of course those are all virtually obsolete
now. Since the Hitler War, radar
has been developed to such an extent
that we can look hundreds of miles out to sea, and in the
last thirty years
or
so we've had the spread of satellite observation. From a satellite you can look
across several hundred miles of weather at a glance. Take that
picture, for instance..." he
indicated the huge framed photograph
hanging
on the wall above his head.

Jo did indeed look at it. She had
noticed it when she first sat down,
and had intended to bring it into the conversation as soon
as she could.
It was
an enlarged photograph of the Gulf of Mexico, taken from a great distance up,
in the center of which was a pile of white, rather like a large
scoop of whipped cream dropped on
to the cardboard, although the cream
was clearly rotating in an anti-clockwise direction,
while in the center there was drilled a neat little blue hole. "That's a
hurricane," she said.
"The hole
is the eye."

"The first hurricane of
1977," he agreed. "Named Anita. Now there you have the entire
dimensions of the system on one photo. The outer clouds,
those things that look like rocks,
are over Brownsville, Texas. The hurri
cane force winds, the edge of that thick white cloud, are
hitting the Mexican
coast,
around Yucatan. And of course the size of the system, and the speed
at which it is travelling, is monitored from minute to
minute."

"Gosh," she said.
"That looks absolutely terrifying. Have you ever
been in one of those?"

He grinned. "Nope. Nothing
like that. Anita was a big storm. She
carried sustained winds, for a little while, of 150 miles
an hour, which
made
her a Category Four storm, and in fact, damned near a Category
Five. She didn't make it, but in
terms of wind speed she was the biggest
storm
in the Atlantic area for twenty years."

"Gosh," she said again,
and paused. "May I ask you a $64,000
question?"

"Sure."

"Well, you have just convinced me how accurate
all your observations
and tracking systems
are. That being so, how come the forecasts you hear
are so often
wrong?"

He held up a forefinger. "Not
wrong. They are sometimes inaccurate
as to timing, and sometimes the weather does quite
unpredictable things.
I'm
afraid not the most sophisticated apparatus in the world can guarantee
a system will do what it should
do, by all the rules. There
are
certain rules
on which we can rely, as I have
outlined. If you have a low-pressure
area
in the northern hemisphere, the winds will rotate around it in an
anti-clockwise direction. There is no possibility of them doing otherwise. Just
as winds will always flow from high pressure to low; they will never blow up a
pressure gradient. And tides rise and fall in approximately twelve-hour cycles,
no matter what the weather may be doing. These are
natural laws. But a weather system is its own boss. For instance, we
might
track a system all the way from its beginning, off, say, the West
Coast of Africa, around Cape Verde, and for seven consecutive days it may
travel due west at 15 knots. Now, we can say with absolute certainty that there
is bad weather coming. And after seven days we might be tempted to say that in
twenty-four hours from now the storm center is going to be 360
nautical miles due west of its present position.
But at any moment,
without warning, it may change course, increase
speed, decrease speed,
or stop altogether. We
do know that there are rivers of air in the
atmosphere, along which storm systems flow like driftwood in a
river.
We also know that tropical storms spawn, and can only flourish, over warm
water. But we can still never be absolutely certain what they are going to do
next. And incidentally, if you are going to use any of this,
be sure you point up the difference between the speed
at which the system
may be travelling, and the wind speeds it is
generating. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the faster a
hurricane is travelling the
more dangerous
it is, whatever the wind speeds circulating round the eye
happen to be.
That is quite wrong. In fact, in most cases, the reverse is
true. Hurricane winds are generated by heat, not by
speed. Therefore,
the slower a
hurricane is travelling, the more time, for instance, it spends
over warm water, the stronger the winds round the
center are likely to
be. Equally, the faster a system is travelling, the
faster it will hit you and be on its way again."

"Yes," she said. "I
think I have it. Gosh..." she looked at her watch.
"I have taken up an awful
amount of your time. Really, I could sit here
and talk to you forever, but..."

"I haven't told you about hurricanes yet,"
he pointed out. "Well, maybe..."

"We can talk about them over lunch," he told
her.

Jo was taken by surprise. She hadn't had a chance to
analyze what she felt about this man, and it was necessary to feel something
about him if
she was going to write about
him. And if she had often lunched with other
interviewees, it had never been on a day quite like this, when she
should
have been supporting Michael
at the Four Seasons... and if not,
munching a sandwich at the office.
But she only hesitated for a moment
before
accepting – she wanted to feel she could get some of her own back
for
that slap this morning.

He took her to a trattoria. "I can recommend the
pizzas here," Richard told her, across the red-chequered tablecloth.

"I love good pizza," she said.
"Pepperoni, please. And a salad."

"Make that two," he
told the waiter. "And will you bring us a bottle
of Frascati right away, please?"

"Si, signor." The boy departed, and returned
to uncork and pour the pale Italian wine.

"I don't like spirits at
midday unless I know I can nap it off after lunch."
Richard raised his glass. "Hope you enjoy
this."

Jo sipped, and nodded. "It's lovely. Very light
and refreshing."

He watched her, as he had throughout the interview.
She fascinated
him – probably because
she was the greatest possible contrast to Pam, in
every way, so relaxed and friendly on the one
hand, and yet so correct
on the other, reserved in her speech and
gestures: the idea of her ever rolling around with a beach bum was impossible.
"Are you English?" he asked suddenly.

"Heavens! Do I still have an
accent?" She laughed and nodded. "Yes,
I am."

"I can't say you have too much of an accent, but
it's the way you talk, and sit, and your clothes... they look English."

"They are."

"And happily married, I would say."

Jo shrugged. "Isn't everyone?"

"No," Richard said briefly. "Tell me
about yours."

Between mouthfuls of pizza, Jo
told him a little about herself, how she and
her husband had met, her career, surprised by the
number of his questions,
wanting to
believe his apparent interest was genuine. "Now tell me what
went wrong with yours?" she asked. And he
knew her question was genuine;
more than a mere attempt to gain copy for
her article.

"I guess she wanted to live one way, and I
another."

"I'm sorry. Are you divorced?"

He nodded.

"Would that be why you left Florida?"

"I left Florida because NABS offered me twice as
much as I was getting there." Then he gave a crooked grin. "Don't you
believe it: I was running like hell."

They gazed at each other for several moments, then she
swallowed her last mouthful. "That was lovely."

"Dessert? Coffee? They do a great
cappuccino."

"I really should be getting back."

"But we haven't talked about hurricanes,
yet."

"Heavens! We haven't, have
we? Well, perhaps, if you do recommend
the
cappuccino..."

Richard signaled the waiter.

"So," she said.
"Can you tell me, as simply as possible, what a
hurricane actually is?"

"Well, as simply as possible, it is a depression
which has gotten out of hand. Depressions are caused by warm air rising, which
warm air will
always do: think of the steam
from your kettle. Nature, as you know,
abhors
a vacuum, so when warm air rises, cold air rushes in to replace
it. Even well up in the north it can do this at
quite a speed, but
being cold air the whole system tends to collapse
fairly quickly. In the sub-tropics, when the water temperature heats up, the
air starts to rise, and is replaced by only slightly cooler air. Thus this new
air isn't cold enough to quash the system; it merely heats up and rises itself.
So we
have a continual spiral of rising air,
which, if the other conditions are
right,
just gets faster and faster, like a top gaining speed instead of losing
it.
You could think of a hurricane as a gigantic tornado or waterspout,
only they can be hundreds of miles across. And of
course they are
generating winds of Force Twelve and up."

"Why do you say Force Twelve? What does that
mean?"

He grinned at her as he stirred coffee. "I think
you know that one."

"Maybe I do, but tell me anyway. So I can quote
you."

"Well, it's just a reference system invented by a
British admiral named Beaufort about 150 years ago. So it's called the Beaufort
Scale. It divides
up wind speeds into readily
recognizable categories. For instance, zero
on the scale is flat calm. Force Three is a light breeze, say 12 knots:
that's when you would get your first whitecaps at sea, and your first tree
moving
on land. Small trees, anyway.
Force Five is a pretty good breeze, and
when you have Force Six, which is around 25 knots, you have spray flying
and big trees whipping to and fro.
It's the sort of wind you'd have
difficulty walking against. After that
you get into storm territory. Force
Eight is
a gale, around 35 knots. That can be pretty serious at sea,
at least to
small craft. Yachts have to reef. Then
Force
Ten is a storm, 50 knots. Now that really is something. You
have big waves, twenty or thirty feet from trough
to crest. Even good-sized ships can get into trouble in that type of situation.
And on land
you have some trees coming down, and chimney pots and that
sort of thing."