What is the calm on the Beaufort scale? How to identify storm scores?

- How are you?
- Complete calm, continuous calm.

A similar answer to a fairly standard questionmet after some separation of a comrade can testify both to calmness, and that there are problems, and considerable. So what is calm, and why is this sea term used to describe often quite terrestrial situations?

Sea calm

This word came to us, most likely, from Holland. It was there that Peter the Great studied naval rules and terms. In German it sounds the same and means the same, that is, the total absence of wind.

Is it good for sailors or bad? Now, in the age of powerful motors, it may seem to some that such a state of the ocean, the sea, the river or the lake contributes to a good journey. But it's impossible to sail without wind. In addition, the lull usually portends a storm. Therefore, the sailor is most fond of it when a weak, moderate, or fresh wind is blowing. Details of gradation can be learned by reading the Beaufort scale.

What is the calm on the Beaufort scale?

There is a way to determine the class of excitementwater surface, allowing the most objective assessment of the degree of its danger. Of course, it is difficult to do this "inexpensively" for an inexperienced sailor, but there are visible signs of help in this matter. There are also quite tangible physical parameters to be measured by instruments. For example, if there is no wind at all.

Calm. What it is?

This is the state of the atmosphere in which airmoves at a speed of up to twenty centimeters per second. Almost perfectly smooth water surface is observed, and the smoke from the fire does not deviate from the vertical. Calmness (zero points) should not be confused with quiet weather (1 point on Beaufort), when a small ripple takes place. Wind - up to one and a half meters per second, on scallops of small waves there is no foam. A weak storm of two points is characterized by the vitreousness of short waves and their somewhat higher altitude. Objectively measured velocity of air masses near sea level reaches 3.3 m / s.

In total, dozens of species are distinguished, for example,visible "sheep" testify to the storm in three points. It is also called easy (it should not be confused with the weak, it is a little, but stronger). Nine points are called just a storm, by default.

Everything is known in comparison, and correctly defineda storm can be seen at a glance only by the sailor who saw the real wave, not only in the picture. But full (it is also called dead) calm recognizes any newcomer.