It was a blustery afternoon in Lawrence.
As I was riding my bike home from work today and almost toppled over from an unusually strong gust of wind, I started wondering, what is this mysterious force that attacks us from nowhere, keeps flags flying, and allows weather vane salesmen to stay in business?
I never took as much as an introductory meteorology course anywhere in my schooling. If I had, I would have been able to recognize right away that the reason I needed to keep both hands on the handlebars today was the swift movement of air from an area of higher pressure to one of lower pressure, as results when air is warmed by the sun, expands, and rises, making room for colder, denser air to rush in and take its place.
And all this time I've been picturing a big cartoon cloud with puffy cheeks exhaling across our Midwestern state.
Some die-hard blog readers might recognize the flag in today's (artistically rendered) picture as the same Old Glory that adorned Day Eighty-Two's blog entry*. That day in March was a particularly windy one, too. The cherry blossoms now are long gone, and many of the trees in town are bare.
Let's just hope that hot air rising doesn't cool so rapidly as to allow the moisture in the air to condense and fall to the ground as precipitation.
(Somebody looked up "Wind" on Wikipedia...).
Just something to think about next time you're being pelted with nitrogen and oxygen molecules like I was today.
* if that is you, you either have a really good memory or too much time on your hands.
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