Location Taken: Just north of Channel-Port aux Basques, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012
I’ve had a long day today, but then any day that includes you driving for five hours AND staying up for 22 hours straight is a long day, so don’t expect a massive essay today.
Instead, expect the marvelous wind-chiseled hills of Southwestern Newfoundland.
Seriously, the winds here are killer. Well, ok, I don’t know if any of the vehicles blown off the road or trains derailed by the wind involved fatalities, but there’s a reason this stretch of land is know as the “Wreckhouse”.
And just look at this picture. Not a tree to be seen, and trust me, it’s not because the land’s too cold or rocky for trees. Plants just get ripped to shreds if they grow too tall and rigid in areas that regularly get 70 mph winds.
It’s the fault of the geography, really. If you turned 180 degrees from where this photo was taken, you’d see the ocean. Well, ok, the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Even regular ocean winds caused by daily heating differentials between land and sea are pretty strong, certainly enough to drag sand inland for dozen of yards. And the Gulf is a different beast. You’ve got warm freshwater coming in from the St. Lawrence, which drains the Great Lakes. There’s a major cold seawater current, the Labrador Current, that goes around the eastern side of Newfoundland. This means that the gulf is the mixture between two temperatures AND two salinities, both of which cause really interesting heating patterns. And heat differentials are what cause wind, as the air moves from areas of high pressure (usually caused by warm air) to areas of low (usually from cold air).
Then toss in the fact that this area gets hit by pretty much every major storm front that passes across North America. And combine that atmospheric instability with the regular geographic instabilities to get REALLY fun weather!
They still have to occasionally close this particular stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway to truck traffic when the winds get high. And it’s literally the only road between the port at Channel-Port aux Basques and the rest of Newfoundland, so those trucks get stuck.
And they can’t even look at these gorgeous hills while they’re waiting.
Huh, look at that, I DID write a massive essay…
