Let’s start a petition to ban these infernal north west winds (Friday Rant?)

A meteorologist I am very obviously not, but I have lived in the south west for nearly thirty years now and I am utterly convinced that we get far more winds from a northwesterly direction than we used to - and my bugbear is that I simply can’t find anything good about north west winds other than you can sometimes get some really good light which can then produce some awesome god-beams over the sea. North west winds flatter to deceive in my book, in that they are close to promising a fair amount with the direction of them and what they can almost do to certain coastlines, but in fact they tend to fail us on most counts…………

Maybe I am looking back to the mists of time with rose-tinted spectacles on, but I distinctly remember when I started really getting into cod fishing from the shore that on many of the spring tides during winter we would get those SW gales which would help so much with a lot of the cod marks. I remember struggling to open the back doors of my Ford Escort van (fully carpeted out in the back, wicked set of speakers!) on Newquay Headland, and then smashing a load of codling in SW ideal conditions. Of course we still get S and SW gales here in the south west, but I am convinced that we get a lot more northwesterly winds. Around where I live it’s THE wind direction for felling trees when the NW winds get seriously strong, and my opinion is that the trees did most of their growing leaning into predominant SW winds. Along comes a big NW storm and they aren’t made for it, or is that a load of crap? That big NW storm the other day saw a number of trees come down around where we live.

On much of my local coastline I can easily go out lure fishing in very strong NW winds, but what those winds actually do to the sea is negligible at best. Most of the time it’s flattening the sea off which I accept can be okay for night fishing and some parts of various estuaries, but even when I used to bait fish I never used to think that NW winds did much good for the fishing itself. Cod, huss, rays, you name it I didn’t like NW winds back then and I like them even less now. I used to chase thornback rays up on a few very shallow marks on the Bristol Channel, and I became convinced that the noise of waves on the water could put the fish off. Give me a southerly wind which was off my back and I tended to do well, but a fair few times I tried to sort of beat the system and head up there on a forecast for really light NW winds. I’d park up, get out of my van, and curse to the sky like you would not believe because that sodding forecast of very light NW winds was always, always far stronger. It produced a lot of little waves on the water as it came right in on the marks, and I never, ever did any good up there on those shallow marks in NW winds. But we’re anglers and we keep trying!

So is it just me or do we seem to get days upon days of north west winds these days on a far more regular basis than we used to? It’s obviously different in different parts of the country and in some respects I’ll take a bit of north west up on the north coast at times - short surf conditions - but in general I don’t think that north west winds are much good for man nor beast. It could be a load of crap, but when my wife and youngest girl go on our 6am dog walks in the week I am convinced that I hear less owls hooting away in the woods when the wind is from the north west. We were out this morning and I only heard one owl and yes, you guessed it, it’s howling NW yet again!

If I am even halfway right then and we are getting far more northwesterly winds than we used to, then my question is why? Does the jet stream get “stuck” more often these days and it causes a shift in our more usual SW and E winds? I’d love a few days of warm southerly winds right now to see if my local coastline might fire with a bit of surf, but when did I last see a couple of days of say southerly 5 gusting 6? I am a bit of an obsessive when it comes to keep an eye on weather forecasts because I like to try and build up a mental image of what might be going on out on the coast together with the tides, but it seems that the more I check the winds, the more they are blowing from the north west! This could all be a load of rubbish and we aren’t actually getting any more NW winds than we used to, but whilst I have never seen any data to convince me either way, I know what I think and I am all for starting one of those online petitions to ask the government if they can please ban NW winds. Hell, if they can have Xmas parties while the rest of us don’t get to see our families and friends then surely they can deal with the wind directions! You all have a good weekend, please stay safe and well and let’s hope that Xmas can actually go ahead this year…………….