[Padraig Dooley]

I was playing at the Wild Coast Sun near Durban last thursday, when I came across something very unusual. I was playing the par five 7th, which was my 16th, at around 1130. It was playing downwind, maybe helping by a club. While on the green the wind died momentarily and then switched direction and gained in strength, so much so that the 8th, which played 166 yards on the day, went from an 8 iron to a 4 iron (I still came up short).

I've never come across this before, where the wind turned 180 degrees and gained intensity by a factor of 4 or 5, all in the space of a couple of minutes. It turned on one guy with his ball in mid flight, he was playing the 13th (about 185) hitting 5 iron his ball ended up 20 yards short of the green in a ravine, next guy up used a 3 wood for the shot.

Has anybody come across something like this?

At home, when the tide turns, sometimes the wind drops and changes direction but never gains much more intensity.

[Tom_Doak]

Padraig:

Are those holes parallel with the water or going into or away from it?

The only similar thing I have seen is at Shoreacres in Chicago, whose clubhouse sits right on Lake Michigan.  It's not uncommon there for the wind to be blowing off the lake (from the east) on the holes close to the clubhouse, but then for the wind to be blowing from the west (as it does for the rest of Chicago generally) on the holes that are out away from the lakeshore.

[Anthony Butler]

From my old surfing days in Australia, the directional change in the wind on the coast was a factor of the airmass over the land becoming warmer or colder than that over the ocean (which is usually more stable in temp.) Depending on the prevailing ocean currents in your part of the world and time of the year, this happens sometime in the morning. 9am was the usual time in Sydney, Australia when the wind went from offshore (good) to onshore (not so good). It would switch back again at around 8pm in the summer.

The rapid change you experienced usually signifies a super warm or super cold air mass interrupting this daily change of weather.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Padriag about 15 years ago my wife and I walked up the east side of Lake Maggiore, on a beautifully sunny Sunday in September.  When we got to a narrow point about mid way up the lake there were lots of kids setting up the smallest windsurfers I had ever seen with tiny sails on a completely windless day.  I persuaded my wife it was time to stop for lunch. The only place we could find was in the basement of a small hotel so we didn’t linger.

When we came out, less than an hour later, it was blowing a hooley and the guys were jumping boards off lake waves.  Amazing.  Apparently happens every day from July to mid September, on Lake Como too.

[Padraig Dooley]

Tom

Holes 7,8 are roughly parallel with the water. 9 plays away from the sea and doglegs parallel to it. 13 plays over a ravine and waterfall towards the sea.

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