How, When, and Where High Wind Can Affect Lawn Bowls

A strong, steady, or moderate wind with occasional strong gusts will affect the draw of a lawn bowl but really only on a fast green. In the northern hemisphere playing on grass, its effect on bias normally can be ignored. Playing on an outdoor carpet, bias correction deserves consideration, if the wind is high, the sun bright, and the surface hot. 

Strong winds affect weight on all surfaces because they throw off your body’s balance.

 

A headwind needs more weight and a tailwind needs less weight no matter the playing surface because some significant fraction of the extra distance we get when the wind is behind us is caused, not by the wind propelling the bowl, but by the wind tipping us to put more of our body weight into our delivery….just as a tailwind pushes us when on a bicycle. In contradistinction, a headwind reduces our forward momentum in our delivery.

If you are facing predominantly a headwind, start estimating to finish 1-2 meters behind the jack. Then, with subsequent bowls, you can subtract weight as necessary to improve your proximity to the jack. This way you will finish with fewer short bowls.

Be prepared to stop your delivery or step off the mat to wait out a really severe gust no matter its direction.

The following considerations that relate to a correction to your draw apply only to high winds combined with fast greens as noted above.

Larger heavier bowls can be expected to be deflected less by wind. So long as the weather is dry using a set of bigger bowls can be advantageous. If the weather is both windy and rainy, however, the rain will have the greater influence and smaller bowls that are easier to grip should be preferred. 

There is a hypothesis, based on an analogy, that bowls with grips should be slightly more resistant to being deflected by the wind. This, it is argued, is because the grip’s indentations would cause a more turbulent flow of air around the bowl. For golf balls, this has been scientifically studied and is why all commercial golf balls are covered with dimples. The disruption of the laminar flow around the golf ball as it flies through the air allows it to travel farther.

 This is a very weak analogy when applied to bowls. A lawn bowl is very much bigger than a golf ball. It has many fewer dimples. It is not arcing rapidly through open air without other wind-disrupting nearby surfaces (like the ground). 

So contrarily, but also without any scientific investigation, Jack High Bowls { https://www.jackhighbowls.com/help/lawn-bowls-gripped-vs-non-gripped-which-is-best/ } reports that some bowlers asseverate that their ungripped (ringed) bowls perform better in the wind than their bowls with grips. If I had to choose I would prefer the anecdotal reports of bowlers over a poppycock hypothesis based on a very dubious analogy. 

When would the wind be strong enough to be a consideration even on a fast surface? 

If standing at the head, you extend your bowl’s cloth horizontally from your waist and let it drop, the wind is of no consequence if the towel only blows 6 inches away from the vertical. Also, a wind needn’t, and really cannot, be taken into account if it is swirling without any consistent direction. Often you don't even need to drop your towel to read it….  just look at any movement or the angle it hangs at. If there are flags at the corners of the rink, look at them.

In a steady strong wind on a fast surface, the most common advice is to always bowl the wide hand. The wide hand, where there is a steady strong cross-wind, is the side towards which the wind is blowing. Bowl a narrower line than what you would choose without wind. You might get an idea of how much to narrow if you have gotten a chance to deliver the jack exactly down the center line.  From how much it has been pushed downwind by the time it has stopped you can estimate. For a stare point 3 meters out in front of the mat line, adjust by a tenth of the distance the jack has been deflected. For example, if the jack, delivered down the center line, has blown downwind by a meter, adjust 10 centimeters; if half a meter, adjust 5 centimeters. At lower wind speeds the adjustment will be less than your error in hitting your stare point! (my error anyway )

 Let us assume for example that the wind is blowing at right angles to the rink’s center line from your left side. Initially bowling on an aim line slightly to the right, that is, in the direction the wind is going (ie downwind), the wind will accelerate your bowl a tiny increment at its release, but 2/3 to 3/5 of the way down the green your bowl will bend back and encounter a slightly more significant but still only partial headwind that helps it come to rest. Provided the correct bias has been chosen your bowl still returns to center rink.

High winds on a fast green favor random error and random error improves the chances of the team with poorer fundamentals. Short ends reduce the time your bowl is moving and reduce the opportunities for the wind to interfere. Play those shorter ends as close as possible to any available windbreak. Move up the mat so you are closer to the clubhouse if that can deflect away the wind. Also, vices and skips may want to play a more aggressive game. Run-through shots have their impact before they are moving slowly enough to be much affected by wind. Finally, be patient about adjusting your line. Your shot may have been fine, it may have just been the victim of a wind gust. 

Bias Winds

The following paragraphs about ‘bias winds’ are only pertinent to play on very fast greens combined with strong winds. These are common in Australia, New Zealand, and wherever there are older greens with outdoor sand-filled carpets. I belong to one club with such a facility; James Gardens LBC in Toronto Ontario Canada. 

The term ‘bias wind’ appears in only one place on the internet— in the Using the Head blogs written by John J. Tupper. Despite its infrequent usage, I consider it a very useful term to reintroduce here. A ‘bias wind’ blows directly, head-on to a bowl as it slows down and finishes. It causes a bowl to stop more rapidly. In contrast, a ‘back bias wind’ is a wind coming from directly behind your bowl as it finishes.

The bowl experiencing a ‘back bias wind’ on really fast greens will seem to run on endlessly. This is because just as that bowl is slowing, it is being pushed from directly behind by the strongish wind.

No matter from what direction the wind comes, it will most dramatically change the path your bowl takes as it slows down. Consequently when you are bowling into the wind approach into the head will be flattened.

When the wind is from behind you it will stretch the entry into the head and make the angle between the line of entry and the centre line smaller.