BTW, can you see the sea from your home - just curious?

Just. It's not that it's far away (Just key in TR18 4TP to Google
Earth, zoom in & you can see the Stevenson Screen)

Well, I can see a roughly screen-shaped white blob, anyway.

but I'm only 19m
asl and there are some trees in the way.

You can't really get an impression of altitude from GE, though.

Google Earth does tell you the altitude. According, my front gardens
at 20m, back at 19m.

Close enough to get plenty of
salt spray in a SE gale.

You get 70 foot waves crashing half a mile inland?

Who mentioned 70' waves? You obviously have little experience of a
real gale over the sea. The air's full of salt spray, it seriously
affects visibility and gets carried well inland. The water can stream
off exposed buildings. http://www.turnstone-cottage.co.uk/PzStorm.PDF
is an extreme example where the waves were shooting twice the height
of the 5 storey Queen's Hotel, and properties were flooded by water
coming down the chimneys. Thick spray was carried 6 miles across the
full width of the Penwith peninsula.

Even when it's just choppy, with no real swell, everything gets soaked
with 800 yards or so of the sea front if there's a stron/gale onshore
wind. Here no real swell at all but still very wet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmGHc2pPsyY

Much more exciting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdYoA...eature=related
That white house on the extreme left is 70' asl.

Graham
Penzance