Of Pitot Tubes & Mice
Air Bellows has been true to its name since the winds began pounding like the hammers of hell about noon yesterday.
It's been a steady blow since then, with a maximum gust of 43 mph. The wrought iron chairs on the deck are tugging at their constraints with the taunt chains giving a fairly accurate indication of average wind direction. My windsock is as tattered as Old Glory was at dawn's early light over Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. And, the incessant wind is producing whisting sounds that could pass as a flock of angry birds in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Here's a plot of wind speed and direction as measured by my weather station since midnight.
The most interesting phenomenon, however, is the water in the bottom of the toilet bowl. The vent pipe in the roof is acting as a Pitot tube as the wind gusts blow past it. This causes a change in air pressure in the pipe as the wind changes speed, thus causing the water level in the toilet to rise and fall. Hmmm. Airplanes use Pitot tubes to measure their airspeed and now it seems houses use toilets for the same purpose.
And, while we are on the subject of toilets, we had an unexpected "floater" the other morning: a very dead, very fat house mouse floating face down. I'm not certain whether he died of a heart attack while trying to escape up the slippery bowl or was overcome by a wind-induced Pitot tube tidal wave. In either case, I flushed the bowl and sent him on his merry way to a kind of impromptu burial in the septic tank.
Ain't life interesting?
It's been a steady blow since then, with a maximum gust of 43 mph. The wrought iron chairs on the deck are tugging at their constraints with the taunt chains giving a fairly accurate indication of average wind direction. My windsock is as tattered as Old Glory was at dawn's early light over Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. And, the incessant wind is producing whisting sounds that could pass as a flock of angry birds in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Here's a plot of wind speed and direction as measured by my weather station since midnight.
The most interesting phenomenon, however, is the water in the bottom of the toilet bowl. The vent pipe in the roof is acting as a Pitot tube as the wind gusts blow past it. This causes a change in air pressure in the pipe as the wind changes speed, thus causing the water level in the toilet to rise and fall. Hmmm. Airplanes use Pitot tubes to measure their airspeed and now it seems houses use toilets for the same purpose.
And, while we are on the subject of toilets, we had an unexpected "floater" the other morning: a very dead, very fat house mouse floating face down. I'm not certain whether he died of a heart attack while trying to escape up the slippery bowl or was overcome by a wind-induced Pitot tube tidal wave. In either case, I flushed the bowl and sent him on his merry way to a kind of impromptu burial in the septic tank.
Ain't life interesting?
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