Wind from Hawaii

The wind is called the Pineapple Express. It starts south west of the Hawaiian Islands and blows toward British Columbia. On its way over Hawaii, the wind picks up the scent of the tropics and carries it along as it travels the 4,200 kilometres of Pacific Ocean to BC.  After leaving the Islands, the wind starts picking up the scent of the ocean, scooping the spray from wave tops.

The weather systems over the North Pacific Ocean are global in size. They travel from west to east and can be five or six thousand kilometres in diameter. A low pressure storm centre in the Gulf of Alaska is spinning counterclockwise and the southern quadrant of this swirling mass of air is the one dragging the wind across the Islands towards BC.

The boy on the dock faces towards the harbour mouth and he can feel the warm wind on his face. He breathes deep and can smell the clean, crisp smell of the ocean. The wind has just blown through Stanley Park and has picked up molecules from Fir and Cedar and added this to the smells that originated in tropic islands.  The wind still holds the warmth of the tropics and when it happens in winter, the wind quickly melts the coastal snow of British Columbia.

The scents carried on the wind are not the only ones to blow over the boy on the dock. There is the smell of creosote from the sun warmed dolphin (several pilings lashed together with wire into a bundle), the faint smell of sulphur from Canada Terminals, the diesel exhaust from the cross harbour ferry, but if you turn your face into the wind and breathe deep, it’s the spice of the islands.