Q&A

John Lindsey

Perhaps no one understands our local weather as well as John Lindsey. But his real talent may be in how he is able to help all of us understand it. He is a Cal Poly graduate who spent 24 years in the Navy where he learned his craft. Our conversation was warm and friendly with a 100% chance of dry humor…

First off, John, before we get started, do you ever get tired of people asking you about the weather?

Never. Absolutely never. I knew one weather guy that I worked with a long time ago and people would ask him about the weather and he’d point at the sky and then walk away.

What’s the single most important thing to understand about the weather? Is there one thing you can point to?

The main thing that drives the weather is the sun. Water has about one thousand times the heat capacity that land does. So, when the sun shines on land it heats up much, much faster compared to when it shines on water. A way to illustrate that is to take a balloon and hold a match under it – it pops almost immediately, right? Take a water balloon and do the same thing, nothing. That’s because the water is able to absorb the heat while the air cannot. So, consequently, what happens is that the land heats up much faster and you start developing a thermal low, which is really a static low. The air warms and begins to rise. But, what happens over the ocean is you basically produce an area of higher pressure and onshore winds develop. Wind is the movement of air from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. It all comes down to the uneven heating of the Earth’s surface due to the differences in heat capacity of the land as compared to water. That’s the driving force behind weather.

Your passion for the weather is obvious. Is this something you have always wanted to do?

It’s a bit ironic because I always thought of myself as becoming a lineman for PG&E. When I was a young kid growing up in Santa Rosa I remember one time waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning and the power had gone out during a powerful storm. There were these PG&E guys up there on the poles working on the power lines in horrible weather trying to restore electricity and I just thought that was so cool because they’re trying to help folks by getting the power back on. I’ve always thought, “Wow, I’d like to do that.”

We’re curious to know, with all the debate about climate change, have you found any evidence of it locally?

One of my jobs at Diablo Canyon was to calibrate our temperaturepressure recorders. As I was calibrating them – this was years ago before anyone was really talking about climate change - I noticed that they were always off by three of four millimeters every year. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and I thought maybe our station was sinking a little, maybe settling a little bit. But what I realized was that the sea level has been increasing by a few millimeters each year. And I thought to myself, “Why in the world is the sea level increasing?” That was the first time I had discovered evidence of climate change.

So, what’s your personal take on the situation?

All of the evidence is there and it is clearly happening. Just look at how plants are behaving differently and how birds are nesting earlier and blossoms are appearing earlier. It’s pretty hard to deny that the Earth isn’t warming up. So, the big debate is are we causing it or is this a natural cycle? And, to be quite honest with you, nobody can say for sure. Nobody can say with 100% certainty that this is being caused by man or by some other thing. However, I feel that we probably are contributing to it. And I also feel that it’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to tackle this problem now and get on top of it rather than waiting another decade when the consequences can be much more severe and much more expensive.

Not to mention that it would lessen our reliance on foreign oil and increase our national security.

That’s absolutely true and I know that from personal experience. While I was in the Navy I spent a couple of long cruises in the Persian Gulf and it almost killed me and it did kill a dear friend of mine. It was back in the 80’s and it was referred to as the “Tanker War.” Iran and Iraq were at war with each other and they were destroying each other’s oil tankers in the Gulf. The United States got involved to ensure the safe delivery of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. And one aircraft, an Iraqi fighter jet, mistook one of our ships as an Iranian oil tanker, but it was actually the USS Stark. It fired two missiles at our guys and the second one killed 37 sailors and wounded 21 others.

Was your friend on the ship?

No, we were crewmen on a SH-2 Seasprite (a ship-based helicopter) and we were coming in for a nighttime landing on another ship, the USS Trippe. The landing gear didn’t come down on one side, the rotors hit the deck and splintered into a million pieces and we rolled over the side of the ship splashing upside down on the water. We sunk quickly and it was pitch black. I was disoriented and close to panic because I was trapped and knew I couldn’t hold my breath much longer. Somehow a light came on. To this day I don’t know where it came from but it illuminated the cabin. I could see the door and I swam for it. Once I cleared the fuselage I inflated my life preserver. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the surface. When I surfaced one of our pilots was calling out, “Dwight, John!” My friend Lt. Dwight Greer was never found. I think about him every day.