O/T? Link between change in tidal and wind direction.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Its part of links Golf lore that a change in tidal flow direction around high or low tide, can bring  a change in the wind direction.  I believe I’ve read it on here and I’ve certainly been told about it. I’ve played a lot of east coast links golf and when I mentioned this to my Brother he said he’d been told this at St Andrews – which has tidal water on two sides.
 
The reason for discussing it now is that last week I went on a Tide Walk with the young, enthusiast and personable William Thompson. William is the author of the Book of Tides, concerning the UK,  and The World Book of Tides. In his talk he mentioned that he had heard about this and I confirmed that Golfers certainly believe it to be the case. William would like to research this and needs any specific evidence of where people believe it to be true. The more detail the better or even pointers to any previous research you know of.
 
http://www.tidalcompass.com/walks
 
Any comments will be passed on and of course if he publishes anything on it I’ll be happy to share with the group.

[Thomas Dai]

Interesting topic Tony.
There are quite a lot of older airfields in the UK that are alongside the coast and alongside golf courses. Lossiemouth/Moray, Valley/Angelsea, Leuchars/St Andrews are some that immediately come to mind. Airfields usually keep detailed weather, wind etc data so it would interesting to compare their data with tide tables.
atb

[Rich Goodale]

Tony


From my 40+ years visiting Dornoch and living much of that in Aberdour), and in 30+ earlier years growing up in a sailing culture, wind shifts definitely mostly coincide with the tides at littoral locations.  IMHO.


Rich

[Marty Bonnar]

Here’s a couple of Interweb geophysicists generally poo-pooing the notion:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-windspeed-increase-with-high-tide-and-decrease-with-low-tide-in-coastal-areas-on-the-sea
I do like the idea of temperature differential certainly.
F.

[Rich Goodale]

Here’s a couple of Interweb geophysicists generally poo-pooing the notion:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-windspeed-increase-with-high-tide-and-decrease-with-low-tide-in-coastal-areas-on-the-sea
I do like the idea of temperature differential certainly.
F.

Marty (and all your Interweb geophysics pals) Tony's question was about changes in direction, not windspeed.


rfg

[Marty Bonnar]

Any thoughts on the science then?
F.

[Niall C]

When I played down at Silloth I generally played at the same time most Saturday and Sundays, that being just after mid-day. As a rough rule of thumb the wind would get up c.12.30 give or take 10 mins and we put this down to the changing of the tides. I can’t say I actually noticed if the tide was going in or out but the pick up in wind was fairly regular. On medal day, all the serious low handicappers made a point of going out early morning to avoid the wind. 

I didn’t have a regular tee time at the other two links I was a member of but as a general rule of thumb it was noticeably windier in the afternoon before dying down again in the evening.

As an aside, when the Open was at Troon a few years ago, Sky TV had an interesting graphic showing wind speed and direction at various points round the course and it was quite interesting seeing how varied it was at any moment in time.

Niall

[Tony_Muldoon]

Niall I think you need to go on one of Williams Tide Walks, just been too long in Glasgie.


High and low tide will not be the same time every Saturday. But, C.P., the changing temperature of the sea vs the land will tend to produce a change from gentle off shore overnight winds to stronger roughly inland winds at a similar time each day. Of course that's only when there's not a prevailing weather system.


Pretty sure I've heard Alliss (a scientist surely ) and others on the Beeeb burble on about the effect of tide changes on the winds at the Open. So where’s the source of this fire that this smoke can be seen rising vertically from, when wind is less than force 1?

[Tony_Muldoon]

Any thoughts on the science then?
F.

https://www.quora.com/Is-science-completely-bullshit 

[Rich Goodale]

Any thoughts on the science then?
F.

No scientific thoughts, just observations.  I could ask my wife who studied geophysics at Strathclyde and information theory at Penn, but she thinks that scientific conjectures need to be verified, and there is no way to verify conjectures/theories relating to our small understanding of global phenomena due to the  massive lack of information (e.g what is happening in the 10+ miles below the earth's crust or in the middle of our Sun that nobody knows anything about).


Have a nice day!

[Kalen Braley]

NOAA, which I'll stick with, claims its the other way around.

Wind at various strengths affects tidal heights...

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/tides/tides08_othereffects.html