#wildweather #nesc #campbellisland #SubAntarctic
Wild Weather:
To me, this album is a collection of chapters - a folder of memories that together, paint the landscape of what it was like to live in the remoteness of our sub-Antarctic.
Each song covers an important facet of life on Campbell Island and for me, 'Wild Weather' was a must-have song on the album. Weather was the reason I was stationed on New Zealand's southern-most weather station, and it captures the essence of remote sub-Antarctic weather observing.
We reported surface and upper air meteorological observations around the clock, and I wanted this song to embody the loneliness and also the importance of reporting the weather back to Wellington HQ, even if was in the middle of the night in a howling gale, when everyone else on the island, all nine of my colleagues, were fast asleep back at the hostel.
Listen to "Wild Weather" on Spotify
I have vivid memories of dashing down a narrow boardwalk from the met office, or the 'mettery' as we affectionally called it, to the meteorological enclosure, a short sprint of 160 metres there and back in the dark, at 3am, to take the weather measurements. While outside, usually in a gale, the wind whistled through the nearby antenna farm, creating eerily haunting howls. The sea lions could be heard barking and scuffling in Tucker Cove and the air was so cold, I was ever thankful for my warm woolen balaclava and thick woolen lambie.
The southern skies were so, so dark. It didn't take long for my eyes to adjust to the complete and utter blackness, and after taking the temperatures in the meteorological enclosure, I was able to complete the brunt of my weather report by ascertaining the cloud cover, cloud type, height and also the visibility. Once back inside the relative warmth of the mettery I was able to complete the weather report by reading the atmospheric pressure and wind readings and compiled my data into an internationally recognised meteorological code ready for transmission back to New Zealand.
Then it was off to the radio room to fire up the massive 1kW Aerocom transceiver. The sound you hear at the start of 'Wild Weather' is the actual sound from the speakers of this system. At a pre-determined time, Wellington Radio sent a tuning call to a frequency I knew to listen out on. I acknowledged their call and Wellington Radio put my call through to Island Services. Now, my radio call was a telephone call. A radio telephone call. Island services passed me through to Kelburn met office and I was able to read my coded message to the waiting ears at met HQ. Real people, so far away.
My Beacon and my light:
'My Beacon and my light' referred to these people, 1322km away at Kelburn HQ. The reference to 96 days of rain is real - we recorded 96 days of precipitation in our rain gauge - 96 days in a row of water in the rain gauge. We had three days of dry weather, then it rained (or drizzled) for the following 85 days. It was a wet, damp place, that's for sure.
Campbell Island typically only managed 647 hours of bright sunshine in a year. Compare that to 2305 hours of bright sunshine per year at Christchurch and 2470 hours at Blenheim and you can start to comprehend how bleak the place was in terms of sunshine. Located at 52.52° S, 169.16° E, Campbell Island was beyond the ‘Roaring Forties’ and embedded firmly within the ‘Screaming Fifties’, where gales were commonplace, and polar storms a regular occurrence. Indeed, at Campbell Island, wind gusts of 130 knots (240 km/hr) have been recorded at the weather station. I always wanted to experience 100 knot (185 km/hr) winds and I was able to do just that during a particularly windy event on the island when I climbed to the top of Beeman Hill, behind the weather station, where we had an anemometer, during a particularly severe gale event.
The Clag:
If you could imagine air circling the globe this far south, it has very few land masses to bump into, and the air becomes saturated as it picks moisture up from the sea on its non-stop roller-coaster tour of the Southern Ocean. When it finally slammed into Campbell Island, the air was forced to lift, and in doing so, it cooled and condensed, forming the ever-present low cloud and drizzle that we became so familiar with. Low cloud and drizzle occurred so often, we gave it a name. We called it “clag”.
We didn’t see the sun at all for 20 days in the row in winter and when we did see it again, we didn’t catch a glimpse of it for long, before it ducked behind the rock castle atop Mt Lyall, to the north of our base. It was normal to expect less than an hour of bright sunshine per day for 215 days of the year, so it wasn’t really the place to visit if you were anything of a sun worshiper. With an average annual mean temperature of 6oC, it was typically rather cool, and the day-time highs rarely exceeded 12 oC.
Enjoy 'Wild Weather'. It's more than a song. It faithfully captures the feeling of what it was like to be running down that narrow boardwalk, at three in the morning, with the gales whistling through the antenna farm and hail pellets stinging my face to get that 3am weather report through to Kelburn, Wellington - met HQ, our beacon and our light.
Enjoy:
Peter Fisher
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