Quote of the Week, Perhaps a Bit Longer

"The biological community is a vast and complicated system for sharing and distributing the energy of the sun among a diversity of life forms." ~Martson Bates

11/10/09

The Wind is Here

I know that Reno can be quite windy, but it seems like fall this year has been unusually windy. I don't know if it's because we hadn't lived in the Reno area for a couple of years and we simply forgot how windy it gets here or if this year is just plain windier than most. For the most part I have been enjoying the wind; I like how the wind can clear out pollution and blow in inspiration. I love the wild nature of wind, how it can change on a whim and blow in random directions. At times it seems as if it's blowing in all directions at once making your hair stand on end. Yesterday, as I walked out to the car I looked up into the sky and about 20 feet above my head were a handful of leaves that had become caught in a thermal. The wind would lift the leaves up, then they would fall a few feet and then the wind would lift them back up. It was beautiful to watch all the colors dancing and swirling in the air.

Wind, quite simply, is the movement of air and is produced by the uneven heating of the Earth's surfaces by our sun. The warm air over the land expands and rises, and the heavier, cooler air rushes in to take its place, creating wind. At night, the winds are reversed because the air cools more quickly over land than over water.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

it's really fun hiking in the wind, but it sure makes the commute tough!