Thar She Blows!

A few years ago we went to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and above is the blowing rock itself.  I  stood  at it and sure 'nuff it blows.  Or it seems to blow by the wind coming upward from its front.   Standing at Blowing Rock and studying the scenery in front of me I think I have it figured out:  The rock is on top of a horseshoe shape ridge.  The winds pour in and, runs into the ridge-wall and cannot go anyplace but up.  The wind is sort of funneled to that point, which the rock is waiting up on top of the ridge and that's that.

 

It reminds me of when I was stationed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, at a huge hangar that I think was originally built for giant helium zeppelins.    At  one end of the hangar when the giant doors were opened facing a big flat runway, and you open the little regular size door at the opposite end the incoming wind could actually knock you down making its way outside.   We sometimes had a little fun with that, and would jump up in the air and let the wind push up three or four feet in the air.  It was something like "air surfing".

 

Blowing Rock also reminded me of nearby Allatoona Damn.  One time my friend Sam and I went to the top of the damn.  Then, Sam was a Georgia Tech student studying aerodynamics.    From what he had learned at tech he believed he could throw a folded paper airplane off the top of the damn and the up shaft of the wind coming up  front of the damn from the Etowah Valley would lift the paper plane up, up, and away. 

 

We carried paper to fold airplanes.  It worked!   One of the planes went high up in the sky, then it would fall until the upward wind caught it and it back up to high heights.  It kept on doing it.   We got tired of watching it and left.

 

It may still be in the same cycle, up, then down, until the wind sends it back up.  It might be doing this for eternity.  Just like in the movie GROUNDHOG DAY.