Lines and Swirls in an Unbalanced Atmosphere

 

#2277 "Singleton Summer Clouds"

I watched a buoyant cumulus rising in the spring sunshine. It reminded me that it was time for the next instalment in weather appreciation. Give me a swirl, and I will give you a line and three more swirls. Or give me a line and I will return the favour with four swirls. The weather is lyrical and understanding what those swirls and lines are saying is real meteorology. Weather is not a battle; weather is more like a ballet of forces and physics. All you need is your imagination and your right hand (for the northern hemisphere, but use your left hand if you are south of the equator). 

I typically see the lines first before swirls. The lines are boundaries between different air characteristics. One side of the line is probably warmer and more moist. The cloud elements can be witnessed as wonderful tracers of motion while the other side is cooler and drier and cloud free. The lines control the weather and they are easily understood. These lines are also created in the atmospheric frame of reference. Our 2D conceptual model is still informative regarding the processes and shapes in the 3D world of the smoke rings - but much simpler to describe in a planar world. 

The Deformation Zone (DZ) Conceptual Model of
Two opposing Puffs along the Axis of Contraction
; The DZ Line and the The Four Swirls

 

As described in the previous Weather Appreciation Blog “Down to Earth Meteorology” the balanced, straight line deformation zone is probably the most useful and fundamental of all conceptual models. But it can take on many variations. 

The atmospheric environment is rarely in balance. Heat, moisture, electrical charge and a host of other quantities are always being transported up and down and north and south to try to keep the earth in harmony. 

Now imagine that the puff of air that generates the smoke ring is unbalanced and strong and directed toward the deformation zone. The strong puff generates intense, adjacent, companion swirls. The angular momentum of the strong swirls of the smoke ring is a conservative property that only decay with turbulence and time. The meteorological horizontal cross section reveals companion vorticities of the same strength bordering the strong puff. I use larger fonts to depict more intense vorticity swirls. 

The confluent asymptotes that stretch outward from the col can be no longer straight. The confluent asymptote bordering the cyclonic swirl must curl cyclonically. The companion anticyclonic confluent asymptote bordering the anticyclonic swirl must be curled anticyclonically. The new deformation zone comprised of these two confluent asymptotes joined at the col, resembles a drawn  bow that is pulled and releasing the strong puff of air. The air and weather system are moving in the direction shot by the bow. The strong swirls can be easily understood in 3D by using the appropriate hand. 

The effects of the strong puff also impact the meteorology on the opposite side of the deformation zone. As the cyclonic confluent asymptote becomes more cyclonically curved, the paired anticyclonic swirl across the DZ finds itself in a larger volume of air. Like a figure skater extending their arms, the rate of rotation for that “N” decreases even while the angular momentum remains conservative and unchanged. An identical process happens simultaneously with the paired cyclonic swirl, the red "X".  

As those two swirls slow their rate of rotation, the inflow puff between them must also slow. A change in just one element of the deformation zone conceptual model is communicated to every other element and changes everything! In addition, these principles apply at all scales of motion from the microscopic to the cosmic. The creative human can watch these patterns unfold in the sky and really understand. 

A 2 dimensional look at the changing deformation zone is sufficient to explain what happens in 3D.  My friends in COMET created straw-dog animations of some of these principles, many years ago (2006 and 2007). This material was well outside my official duties but I felt it was important to get these concepts documented from night shifts many years previous. The COMET animator was gifted and gifted me with these representations of mind-wanderings  free from daily distractions. I wanted to illustrate how a change in any single component of the DZ conceptual model is communicated to influence the other components.

The curvature of the confluent asymptote reveals which of the paired vorticity swirls is stronger. This is a powerful thing to know with respect to the weather...

In the painting, each individual cumulus is a strong, nearly vertical puff with a 3D smoke ring within the visible cloud. The 3D patterns can be described by 2D lines. There are strong and bold vertical strokes in the painting linked to bumps in the cauliflower cloud head. Each links to a smaller, vertical puff of air and a smaller repetition of the same conceptual model. As I painted, I thought of Lewis Fry Richardson  (1881-1953). Lewis was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. Our lives overlapped just a few months but I would have like Lewis a lot. He wrote the following rhyme and I painted that into the cumulus clouds. 

“Big whirls have little whirls,

That feed on their velocity;

And little whirls have lesser whirls,

And so on to viscosity.”

Keep you paddle in the water (making both lines and
swirls) and warmest regards,

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

Down to Earth Meteorology

#2056 "Singleton Sunset Shades"

These thoughts are designed to lead you full circle back into the planar earth world of meteorology. From my first blog entry in this meteorological series until now, I have empathized thinking in three or even four dimensions to better understand the atmosphere and the weather. Now we are going to simplify that back to the flat earth and a simple piece of paper. And that is OK!

In “Cloud Shapes and Lines in the Atmosphere” I illustrated that cloud patterns are much simpler if you examine them from the atmospheric frame of reference. Our earthly frame of observation is not where the weather lives. But puffs, swirls and lines are all part of the same conceptual model and we are going to dramatically simplify that concept. Moisture in the air makes these otherwise invisible air flows obvious. These patterns relate directly to the weather. The use of your hand and the presence of any cloud, will tell the rest of the story. 

The atmospheric frame of reference (green box in the graphic) moves with the average speed in the atmosphere (purple circle with vector). Every wind observed in the earth frame (purple box) can be expressed as this average plus a small difference from the mean (green box). 

Vector addition to get from the
Atmospheric Frame to the Earth Frame 
and back again

This simple but important example is when the west wind in the earth frame simply decreases a bit. In the atmospheric frame of reference (green box), this is represented by two small opposing puffs. The average wind in the atmospheric frame is zero. In the accompanying graphic, the dashed light purple arrows in the earth frame (purple box) on the left are added to the average wind (purple circle with vector) to achieve the purple arrows of the decreasing wind in the earth frame. The paired puffs of air in the atmospheric frame each produce a “smoke ring”. 

Each puff of smoke reveals a single smoke ring but 
there is an invisible, smoke ring paired with each of those. 

A deformation zone skin separates these opposing, three dimensional smoke rings. Typically the air on one side of the deformation zone is more moist while the other is drier. The moisture tracers can only reveal the smoke ring circulation on the moist side.  

The opposing puffs in the Atmospheric Frame
creates the Deformation Zone Conceptual Model

Imagine the complexity of the mathematics required to describe the paired smoke rings in 3D. The human mind can easily visualize the circulations and understand the weather implications but the math is much more challenging. The weather and the atmosphere are very three or four dimensional and it is actually easier and better to consider the bigger picture in the atmospheric frame of reference. My friends at COMET in Boulder, Colorado could make some terrific animations to make these concepts all come alive. Until that happens, a flat piece of paper will suffice. 

The Deformation Zone Conceptual Model
of opposing puffs along the axis of contraction

To recap in 3D: These paired smoke rings are generated by a simple decrease in the wind as measured from the earth’s surface. The pair of rings is separated by a three dimensional deformation zone skin. The relative intensity of the swirls define the shape of the deformation zone skin and vice versa.

The atmosphere is thin - thinner that the skin of an apple in a comparative sense.  More importantly, cloud layers are generally two dimensional and move parallel to the earth’s surface on the constant energy surfaces (see Isentropic Surfaces - Science and Art Merges). The quasi horizontal layered cloud intersects the 3D Deformation Zone Conceptual Model in essence making a horizontal cross-sectional. 

Meteorologists have typically just considered the quasi-horizontal cross-sections of the 3D Deformation Zone Conceptual Model. This is a rare case when it is absolutely acceptable to simplify the 3D conceptual model into the two dimensional plane because that is what the clouds do. 

The three dimensional smoke rings is thus reduced to companion X’s and N’s that straddle the axis of contraction puffs that blow inward within the cross-section. By convention the red “X” is considered to be positive or cyclonic. The blue “N” is considered to be negative or anti-cyclonic rotation. The fingers of your hand will curl in the direction of the circulation when you thumb points upward at an X and downward at an N. Use your right hand if you are in the northern hemisphere and keep your left hand for doing meteorology south of the equator. 

The Companion Vortices are associated
 with the same 3D Smoke Ring
The Paired Vortices across the green
Deformation Zone (Axis of Dilatation)
are with different Smoke Rings but still influence each other

The 3D deformation zone skin becomes the axis of dilatation line (the double headed green arrow) when the quasi horizontal cloud intersects the conceptual model. 

For simplification, we will focus on the 2D Deformation Zone Conceptual Model in the above graphic for the next few meteorological blogs. It is a powerful tool that I built my career of weather prediction around. I cannot imagine how many times I sketched that pattern and its many variations... 

So we have finally come down to earth and the simplified deformation zone conceptual model. I venture to say that this concept is the most important tool to use in understanding patterns in any fluid. This lines and the associated swirls are universal and have a lot to say… Give me any one of the five components of the Deformation Zone Conceptual Model and the others simply fall into place. 

The swirls and lines in "Singleton Sunset Shades" are easily explained. Art is science. Enjoy!

Keep you paddle in the water (making swirls) and warmest regards,

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

The Solution to Cloud Swirls Can Be Found in Your Hands

#2361 "Singleton Sunset Swirl"

In the atmospheric frame of reference, every cloud shape can be considered in terms of a swirl. If you align the fingers of your hand in the direction of the cloud curvature, your thumb must point either up or down. Why and what does it mean? 

A movie played in my mind when I was attempting to explain this stuff years ago, arms flailing and pencil and paper flying. My friends at COMET turned some of those into animations and graphics. I will try again with a different approach. 

Imagine yourself at the equator with you back to the rising sun. Life is good with the warmth on your back. You can’t feel it but you are in a non-inertial frame of reference. The Earth is spinning as it orbits the “stationary” sun. Fictitious forces that result from the rotation of the Earth include the Coriolis and centrifugal forces. These forces make weather even more interesting as they shape the lines in the sky. 

Imagine I am at the equator at sunrise looking west...

Now stretch your arms outward and curl your fingers out as well. Your right arm must point north while your left arm is directed toward the south. The fingers of both hands are curled cyclonically. Both thumbs of your cyclonically curved hands must point upward. 

The previous entries in the Weather Blogs all mentioned the “right hand rule” because the selected weather examples were in the northern hemisphere.  When I participated in the Solar Car Race in the Australian Outback in 1996, I employed the “left hand rule” instead. Both rules describe cyclonic rotation. 

The effects of the Coriolis force at the equator are not noticeable - in fact, they are zero. An observer stationary with respect to the sun, could watch you standing at the equator. They would see that your back does not turn at all as the Earth does it daily spin. 

If you could stretch your arms gradually until your hands reach the poles, the Coriolis force gets really interesting. The same solar stationary observer, would see your right hand complete one entire, cyclonic rotation each and every day. Gumby standing at the equator with his right hand stretched to the North Pole would not feel any difference but Gumby is within the non-inertial frame of reference. An observer looking down on the North Pole would see Gumby’s hand rotate cyclonically counter clockwise. At the same time, Gumby’s left hand would also complete one full cyclonic rotation every day. An observer above the South Pole looking downward would see Gumby’s left hand rotate clockwise. 

My Friend Gumby

The impact of the fictitious Coriolis force increases dramatically from the equator to the poles. This explains why the swirls and deformation zones are more obvious and dynamic over the higher latitudes. 

Everything that I explained in the earlier Weather Blogs can now be employed in the Southern Hemisphere remembering to employ the “left-hand cyclonic rule" south of the equator. Cyclonic rotation has the same meteorological implications in both hemispheres but you have to use the appropriate hand. 

Another visualization is to shoot arrows from the Poles. An archer at the North Pole aiming toward the south (the only available direction) would see the arrow deflected to the right as the Earth rotates counter-clockwise underneath. The fingers of the archer’s right hand will curl counter-clockwise as well when the thumb points up. Similarly an Antarctic archer at the South Pole shooting northward (an impossible to miss shot) would see the Coriolis force deflect that arrow to the left. From the South Pole perspective the Earth is rotating clockwise in the direction of the fingers of your left hand with the thumb pointing upward. 

There are many ways to look at the fictitious Coriolis created by the spinning Earth. The take away messages are:

• The Coriolis force increases from zero at the equator to a maximum at the poles.
• The deflection is always perpendicular to the motion and to the right in the Northern Hemisphere but to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.
• The rotation of the Earth defines the cyclonic sense of rotation. Cyclonic is counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
• Differential advection of cyclonic rotation with height results in upward vertical motion as indicated by the direction of your thumb (Trust me on this one).

Rotation creates the swirls in the atmosphere. Simple conceptual models based on these swirls can explain everything you need to know about the atmosphere and the weather. The following graphic explains the weather painted in #2361 "Singleton Sunset Swirl". You can do it as well with just a few lessons and lots of sky gazing practice. 

Keep you paddle in the water and warmest regards,

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

An Interview with Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

Liana Voia from Paris, France reached out for an interview with a plein air artist. The connection came like lightning out of the blue with some guidance from the International Plein Air Painters. This is what Liana put together from our candid conversation. It is intended to be an honest observation of art, science and the natural world that we need to protect. Art is a way of life and one must live that with integrity and lots of humour too. 

Keep you paddle in the water and warmest regards,

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

The Oldest Science

#2423 "Remembrance of a Orange Sunset"

Meteorology and forecasting is the oldest science – starting around 200,000 years ago. Cave people needed to be able to observe and correctly predict the most dangerous weather in order to endure. This brainy skill set was essential for survival. 

#2375 "Fire and Rain Coming"

There are dozens of weather references in the Bible. Some are even weather forecasts like Luke 12:54 “And he also said to the multitudes, When you see a cloud rise in the west you immediately say, There comes a shower; and it is so.” These are really simple observation based forecasts. Real forecasting requires much more. 

The weather and the world is complex. Consider a thin layer of a compressible fluid on a rotating spheroid with a tilted axis in an elliptical orbit about a heat source of varying intensity. Heat and moisture energy in this thin atmosphere requires constant readjustment and stirring just to stay in balance. Weather is the result.

The Thin Atmosphere

Meteorology may not be rocket science – it is much more challenging. Modern forecasting required the invention of physics. The principle was that if we could analyse the current state of the weather, then the laws of physics could be invoked to move the atmosphere and its energy around and thus predict the future state of the atmosphere – the weather. The laws of nature may be inviolate but the world is a complex place and there is much to analyse and more to understand. It can be so intimidating that many now just look at the numerical weather (NWP), computer simulated atmosphere for their forecast. There is a better and more fun way. 

Sample Simplified NWP

I plan to gradually post a series that will take us back to the olden days when people slowed down and looked up at the clouds with both wonder and understanding. The NWP will still have a place for what is happening over the horizon. This will be a creative and artistic look at the science of weather. I will keep them brief. The first Blog in that series is already done. 

Keep you paddle in the water and warmest regards,

Phil the Forecaster

Next time… understanding swirls with your fingers…

Weather Watching Guide - Contrails

4:50 pm Monday February 1st, 2021

Man made contrails can be useful for understanding the weather. I have written about the pollution aspects of jets in "Blue Sky Blues". This article will take us back to my very keen early days as a meteorologist when everything I saw made me ask "why". I envisioned thought experiments in my mind in an attempt to figure out the problems that I had assigned myself. Much of this effort played out on quiet night shifts. This one was about a contrail I witnessed back in Shearwater when the  skies were blue and advection fog was not messing with my forecasts. The contrail was sharply defined on one edge and not the other... "why"? I figured the answer out in 1979. It came back to me as I was watching a recent sunset. 

Every cloud has a story to tell… even the aircraft contrail. Here are the postulates I use for reading the stories written in the clouds.Also see "Weather Watching Guide for Everyone…" 

•       Every shape is generated within the atmospheric frame of reference.

•       The differential motions of the relative winds do the shaping.

•       Gravity waves are everywhere perpendicular to the relative winds in a stable layer. The spacing of these gravity waves is related to wind speed just like waves on the ocean. Larger waves are separated by larger spacing and are created by stronger winds.

•       Cloud streets and Langmuir streaks are everywhere parallel to the relative winds in an unstable layer.

•       Differential tangential changes in wind speed cause rotation –swirls.

•       Differential perpendicular changes in wind speed cause convergence -  DeformationZones.

This one contrail in the Singleton sky resulted from a jet probably leaving Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and headed to Europe. The postulates can be applied to the moisture patterns to decipher the weather story whether they be natural or man-made in nature.

The approach that I prefer is to start with the obvious clues and assemble as many puzzle pieces as possible. One can infer any missing clues since the pieces will only fit together in a few ways while still obeying the laws of nature.  The best solution will have the most puzzle pieces fitting meteorologically together into a plausible and consistent weather story.

These clouds are all ice crystal cirrus clouds. The layers of cirrus cloud are certainly at different heights above the ground but that does not impact on the weather story.

The sunset timing reveals that the view is westerly. The exact timing of 4:50 pm on Monday February 1st, 2021 would yield the exact angle but that too is not important. (244.5 degrees courtesy of https://www.sunearthtools.com/)

The train track optical illusion makes the streaks of cirrus appear to converge in the distance for the same reason as crepuscular rays. The Langmuir streaks of cirrus are actually parallel. This can be verified from the satellite view of the patterns.

Point A is located along one of the Langmuir Streaks. The ice crystals of the Langmuir streaks occupy a significant layer of unstable atmosphere in order for their formation. The bottom of this layer is the stable layer that is responsible for the gravity waves incorporated within the Langmuir streaks. I inferred the east wind (blowing toward the sun) because ascent is required in the atmosphere for cloud formation. I was playing the warm conveyor belt conceptual model in my mind.

Point B is located at gravity waves in the contrail. The jet had a significant head wind on his way to Europe. These gravity waves of the contrail are at a lower level than the Langmuir streaks but are in the same wind field. The contrail is persistent implying that the air mass is moist which is also consistent with the warm conveyor belt conceptual model

Point C is located at smaller gravity waves within the larger gravity waves of the contrail. These are what caught my eye and why I did the painting. I can explain...

The contrail has a sharp northern edge (to the right in the image) and a diffuse southern edge. Why?

The dispersion of the ice crystals can be explained mathematically … but not today. The pattern is very common and has a simple explanation not requiring differential equations. The Gaussian profiles can be simply approximated by two outward point vectors. Consider Hansel and Gretel leaving a broad trail of equally scattered bread crumbs. Atmospheric dispersion caused by turbulence will spread these crumbs outward in an even broader path. The particles are originally clustered along the path of the jet. The green concentration curve in the following graphs is concentrated with a narrow and high peak. With time the particles disperse outward and the concentration curve shift to the red, the green and eventually the broad and flat orange curve. 

In Graphic 1, the atmospheric dispersion of the contrail can be simplified by the blue arrows in order to avoid the complex mathematics. Ice crystals in column b can stay where they are while those in columns a and c move to the shoulders of the normal distribution with time.

In Graphic 2, the atmosphere relative winds are depicted by the large block arrow which moves the entire contrail. This relative wind will also move the ice crystals in the three columns. None of the ice  crystals have been moved yet by those vectors.

In the final graphic 3, the vector addition of the atmosphere relative winds to the dispersion vectors enhance the downwind convergence while increasing the upwind divergence. The crystals in column c are moved to the right by both the dispersion and the relative wind vectors. The crystals in column b are only moved by the relative wind vector. The crystals in column a do not move much as the dispersion vector is in the opposite direction of the relative wind vector. 

Note: The number of ice crystals and the area under each of the coloured distributions is intended to be the same.

The next time you view a contrail in the sky, now you will know how to hear what it is saying. If the drift is from the south which is likely the case for a persistent contrail in a moist air mass, you can expect warmer weather and perhaps even a low pressure system. The drift from the south will produce a sharper, more defined northern edge. 

If the contrail is drifting toward the south with the sharper edge on the south side of the contrail, you can expect cooler and drier weather. The southward drifting contrail is less likely to be persistent.

Keep you paddle in the water and warmest regards,

Phil the Forecaster

Singleton Philly Celebrates Ground Hog Day 2021

Singleton Philly is alive and well, thank you… and looking forward to the Global Holiday on February 2nd. Unlike his Rideau Hall Relatives, there has been no screaming and yelling in the Singleton Burrow although there was a healthy amount of laughter in 2020. The Singleton Sanctuary is governed by the policy that merit is the only thing that matters. Working for and with nature is a way of life. 

The rural internet is slow and there has been no zooming with the outside world. That may be a good thing. In spite of COVID and technological isolation, news has leaked in the burrow that developers intent on making even more money, can pay the government some cash to ravage his provincially significant sanctuary. Sounds like a good idea to the politicians but not to Philly who intends to leave the sanctuary even more natural and healthy than the way he found it. It is the natural thing to do!

The COVID restrictions that were ignored by the political and corporate elite, were strictly enforced in the Singleton Burrow. It was pretty much life as normal for the hermit artist… and Philly expects that to continue for another year. Philly will get the vaccine but will not rush to the front of the line. Health care, teachers and law enforcement need to be first among everyone serving for the common good.  

Now for the Furcast… Unlike those other better known varmits, Singleton Philly relies on more than his shadow to predict the outcome of February 2nd - science!   A strong Nor’Easter will be pounding its way up the New England coast on Ground Hog morning. Watch out Nova Scotia!  No school for you. The deformation zone pattern suggests overcast skies and cool northerly winds for Singleton in the morning. 

But I already know that I won’t see my shadow … and won’t be scared back into my Singleton Burrow, which means that winter will be over. More importantly I will be obeying the COVID restrictions in the first place and still be in my hole in the ground anyway. 

Scientifically the polar vortex has split due to changes in the stratosphere. As well, La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern—is firmly in place and likely to last at least into the summer. This pattern favours the Nor'Easter that I was mentioning and mild, stormy weather into spring. Maybe even some March low-topped supercell thunderstorms.

For those of you interested in deterministic forecasts, winter is over. It appears that some groundhog got into the computer models with a red crayon. It will be mild though.  But remember that this is a deterministic prediction and thus bound to be flawed - ensembles and probability are betters way to communicate the weather. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water... looking forward to a greener future...  the winds are changing... 

Singleton Philly

And please stay safe... 

By the way, Singleton Philly is not an albino. He turned gray in his thirties from worrying about getting the forecast right...

Art, Science and Creativity

Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci

Recently I read that artists were rated as the most unimportant people during the COVID-19 Pandemic. I beg to differ. The arts, science and the creativity that make both special and enterwine them together are the most vital... and this is true all of the time. 

A quiet period due to a pandemic worked for Newton. 

On July 25, 1665, a five-year-old boy named John Morley, of the parish of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge, England, was found dead in his home. The young boy was the first known case and death from the bubonic plague in Cambridge that year. London's spring outbreak of the bubonic plague had spread to Cambridge. The Cambridge residents raced to isolate themselves in the countryside. Isaac Newton, a young scholar of Trinity College also evacuated to his home in Lincolnshire. The family farm called Woolsthorpe was sixty miles north of the university and fairly remote from the neighbouring villages. Newton was in a creative solitude for the next two years. He worked on his projects that he wanted to solve. These included the invention of calculus, the mathematics of change, analytical geometry, the science of motion, the force of gravity, and more. 

Leonardo as a young man on the left

Leonardo da Vinci also survived a series of bubonic plagues that struck Milan between 1484 and 1485. That plague outbreak killed about 50,000 people which was a third of Milan's population. Leonardo was always working on his many projects - so much so that most of those projects were never completed. Leonardo must have used some of that quiet plague time to design concepts for a future city. Those plans were completed between 1487 and 1490 and can be found in the Paris Manuscript B.

Medieval cities like Milan were characterized by narrow, dirty and crowded streets. Travel and navigation within any city was difficult. Sewage was part of the street. Diseases like the plague spread easily. Leonardo envisioned a renaissance city with an open and modern design that emphasized aesthetics, cleanliness, and efficiency. Leonardo used a network of canals to move goods to and from market. Sanitation was a key part of his planned city. One of Leonardo's sketches even suggest multiple subways beneath the city to move goods and people. Leonardo was way ahead of his time back in 1484. Most modern cities would benefit even today from his insights. I would highly recommend the biography by Walter Isaacson entitled simply "Leonardo Da Vinci". That book tells the entire story of the renaissance genius.

Others were certainly in the same state of isolation due to the various plagues but did not manage to be quite as creative as da Vinci or Newton. That fact does not stop one from trying though. Maybe we can look at COVID as an opportunity to do something great - or at least try. What we must not do is to denigrate the worth of the artists and the scientists... just sayin'. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water, 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

Vincent's Paddle

 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) died at the age of only 37 years.

Thomas Jefferson took the phrase "pursuit of happiness" from John Locke (1632-1704) who was one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and was commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Jefferson turned the phrase into his famous statement of a peoples' inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the American Declaration of Independence. Jefferson did not provide the answer on how or where to find happiness in that pursuit of life.

I believe that Vincent had the solution. A happy life is one where you make yourself “useful” to society and your fellow man.  You can find that theme throughout his 37 years if you only look. Entitlement was not the answer and should not make you truly happy. 

The life struggles of Vincent have been well documented. A Google search of “Vincent van Gogh” yields more than 62 million hits. Some of these links will be misleading and many will just focus on the missing ear and his “insanity”.  People around the globe and especially art historians have very strong opinions concerning Vincent. My approach was to ensure that any opinions I might have, must be well-informed. With this in mind I would like to suggest two excellent resources of the many that I have consulted.

Vincent didn’t realize it at the time but those more than 900 letters that he wrote, mainly to his Brother Theo, would evolve into his life story. “Vincent By Himself” as edited by Bruce Bernard is an excellent summary of those letters. Vincent was a very empathetic, passionate and articulate man and not the frenzied, madman artist on the far edge of sanity as often portrayed. The parody of the genius artist as a starving, crazy lunatic just isn't valid. His letters proved that simple fact but they needed the help of his sister-in-law.  

Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger was the Dutch editor and translator of the letters of the van Gogh brothers. She was the wife of Theo van Gogh, art dealer, and the sister-in-law of Vincent. She became the key player in the growth of Vincent's fame. Without Johanna, Vincent would have likely been unknown more like Johannes Vermeer – but that’s another story.

I also enjoyed “Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story” by Bernadette Murphy. The research that went into “The True Story” is phenomenal. Murphy reveals, for the first time, the true story of this long-misunderstood incident of Vincent’s ear. 

The truth sweeps away decades of myth and reveals the troubled but brilliant artist at his breaking point. Murphy’s detective work spanned the continents. She databased the inhabitants of Arles where Vincent created his finest work and wove their lives together and tied in where Vincent interconnected with each. Murphy uncovered previously unknown information about “Rachel” and uses it to propose a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep. I will not give away the truth here. It is worth reading Bernadette Murphy's book. 

If books are not your style, then the 1956 movie “Lust for Life” is an accpetable American biographical film about the life of Vincent van Gogh. The movie was based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Irving Stone. The life of brilliant but tortured artist Vincent van Gogh was Hollywoodized. Much of the dialogue was imagined and the Vincent story was definitely fictionalized. This book and the movie is the basis of what many think they know about Vincent. The movie did not have the benefit of many of the facts later uncovered by Bernadette Murphy.

If books and movies do not connect with you, there is another option. Don McLean wrote “Vincent,” which is also known as “Starry, Starry Night,” in the fall of 1970 in his apartment full of antiques. At the time McLean was living in the Sedgwick House, a beautiful Federal style house in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The inspiration came to him one morning while he was sitting on the veranda looking at a book about Vincent Van Gogh. As he studied a print of Van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night,” he realized that a song could be written about the artist through the painting. “The more I thought about it, the more interesting and challenging the idea became… I put down the book and picked up my guitar… Looking at the picture, I realized that the essence of the artist’s life is his art. And so, I let the painting write the song for me. Everyone is familiar with that painting.”

Van Gogh actually painted “Starry Night” while he was in an asylum at Saint Remy in 1889. He had to paint the scene from memory, not outdoors as he preferred. Van Gogh mentioned “Starry Night” only twice in his letters to his brother, Theo. Vincent lived well in the hospital and enjoyed more freedoms than any of the other patients. He was allowed to paint, read, and withdraw into his own room and even leave the ground if attended. Vincent certainly wasn’t crazy…

If all of these approaches fail you, then sitting quietly and looking through books of Vincent’s art like Don McLean did, is still a very good option. Travelling to the various museums to see the art in person would be the ultimate joy but far beyond the means of most. If you really do study the art, then Don Maclean’s words might ring true.

Irises (Saint Remy Van Gogh 1889)

The Starry Night (Van Gogh 1889)

“Now I think I know what you tried to say to me

How you suffered for your sanity How you tried to set them free

They would not listen they’re not listening still

Perhaps they never will.”

Vincent was in the pursuit of happiness and trying to be useful in life. I felt that Vincent had an understanding of happiness even though it largely eluded him. This is why I asked Janine to paint a Vincent Paddle. Here are the results. 

Janine selected some of my favourite Vincent quotes. Vincent preferred to be called simply by his Christian name which is how he signed his canvases. Very few people could correctly pronounce his family name anyway.

                                                         If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
                                                                         I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.
                                      There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

Here is Janine’s story behind the Vincent Paddle. 

One wonders what art Tom and Vincent might have created if they had more time to explore their creativity.

I think this story was worth sharing... art matters...and we are all in this together. 

The story of Janine Marson and her art was featured in the March 2020 copy of Muskoa Life. You may also visit Janine's site at www.janinemarson.com.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water (but not this one)... thank you Janine. 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick