On the uselessness of a calm day

Notes · no. 3

A dead-flat morning is the one everybody photographs and the one that tells you least. With no wind there is no mixing worth speaking of, so whatever is happening below the surface stays below it, politely out of view.

You learn more in a stiff breeze. Scum lines gather on the lee shore, which is free information about what is suspended in the water column. Wind also drags the warm surface layer downwind and lets colder water up on the windward side, which you can feel with a hand long before any instrument would bother to tell you.

So the useful days are the uncomfortable ones. I keep having to relearn this, usually while standing somewhere pleasant and getting nothing done.