Casting beneath the wind

Walter & Group....

Comment on casting, "below the wind" from ol Al's Group......and my comment to follow it :-

Gordy

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Al,

In this string I see a number of references to casting low and/or under the wind. Am I correct in remembering that some years ago someone ( I always thought it was Bruce R.) actually clocked wind speed at different heights (within normal casting ranges) above the water's surface and found the differentials to be minimal?

I know on windy days it does somehown seem to feel different . . .

Tom Jindra wrote an article on, "casting under the wind" a few years ago, pointing out that one would have to cast very close to the wave tops or to almost clip the grass in order to derive any significant advantage in going low with a horizontal rod plane. Might contact him for an exact reference.

Dr. Larry Pratt of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Who also teaches fluid dynamics at MIT) wrote an article entitled, UNDER THE WIND for the Loop.....spring issue, 2001 .. His conclusion was much the same. He showed a graph depicting wind speed at various heights above the ground which showed that: "For the conditions under which the figure was made, this surface speed is very small (<2 mph). As the figure suggests, most of the decrease in the wind actually occurs in a very thin layer right next to the ground...." He showed that a wind speed of 20 mph at the rod tip was still 15 mph at the caster's knee level.

To quote him further: "You may have heard it said that the wind speed actually decreases to zero at ground level. This is a matter of great debate among flluid dynamicists during the early prt of the 20th century. Eventually it was shown through visualization of microscopic parcels of air that the wind speed doew indeed decrease to zero at the solid ground. Over the ocean, the wind speed decreases to whatever the speed of the water is at the surface."