Yikes! Rogue Waves

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by S&S

Cool, but i don't know how much that's help us out on the water.

Neither do I expect that RADAR will provide much help to we on the water - I merely tried to answer the asked question.

Knowing & understanding the precurser conditions that lead to microbursts & other severe weather, may be our best defense.

I'm not generally of the opinion that technology trumps knowledge, so the youngsters among us are free to deride my outdated philosophies.

[s/v Jedi]

The micro bursts are considered part of the mysterious disasters of the Bermuda triangle and the report about the Pride of Baltimore fits in there.

When you have a squall with high winds and gusts that register on the wind instruments, it is not a micro burst on top of you (may be from one further away) and the winds will not capsize you. A down draft doesn't register on you instruments. I remember being anchored in Deshays where you get the williwaws. They didn't register but when I used my handheld meter and tilted it into the same slope as the mountain I found 60 knots of wind!

A real bad accident happened in Faro Portugal where a Dutch airliner was hit during landing and was smacked into the ground with massive loss of life. It turned out it was hit by two micro bursts caused by a large thunderstorm. Read about it here: Martinair Flight 495 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

cheers,
Nick.

[S&S]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Neither do I expect that RADAR will provide much help to we on the water - I merely tried to answer the asked question.

Knowing & understanding the precurser conditions that lead to microbursts & other severe weather, may be our best defense.

I'm not generally of the opinion that technology trumps knowledge, so the youngsters among us are free to deride my outdated philosophies.

I'm with you there

[Rod Headlee]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Anybody here been thru such an event (white squall)?

If the sails are down - will the rig stay or is it more serious and may blow away the rig too?

b.

Yeah, I guess it was a white squall. We sailed from Mazatlan to Hiva Oa, while crossing the ITCZ we went through the squall line. Some were black, some were grey, one was white. We dodged many of them, we couldn't dodge them all. The white one was nasty but no big problem, we had 3 reefs in the main and we would just roll up the genny when a squall hit us. It was like being inside a washing machine, no time to check windspeed and barometer, just roll up the headsail and hang on.

We didn't have radar but you can smell them at night and they blot out the stars.