Superpowers Find That Nature Is Still a Major Force to Reckon With : Weather: Gale has warships straining at anchor chains. Thoughts of diplomants turn from world peace to a solid place to stand.

Spiro Agius respects Malta’s impartial role this weekend as host to history, but his meteorologist’s calling demands objectivity: The gale that swamped a summit Saturday was the work of Mother Russia.

There, in a vastness where uncompromising winter knows no perestroika , were spawned the fierce winds that on Saturday humbled the two most powerful men on Earth.

Man proposes, nature disposes.

Witnessed from atop a limestone cliff here, Saturday’s summit belonged to the wind, the rain and the cruel sea.

Below, two mighty warships bucked restively, straining at taut anchor chains bleached with foam. Tugboats were tossed like bath toys in the bay of a 122-square-mile island that is no stranger to the majesty of a Mediterranean winter.

“You’d think somebody would have checked with the weather bureau before scheduling something like this in December,” said a Maltese father, who brought two young children as cliff-side witnesses to history. They didn’t see much, or stay long.

Aboard the U.S. cruiser Belknap, there was statesmen’s concern--and personal discomfit at the seas.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, in particular, proved to be not the most intrepid of the cruiser’s complement, according to one American official who himself looked a bit green around the gills.

As the storm forced cancellation of afternoon talks and a state dinner aboard the Belknap, ambitions dwindled. For some in President Bush’s party, there came a reordering of priorities: world peace could wait smaller seas.

“What some of them want more than anything right now is someplace solid to stand,” said the official as darkness fell over the roiled bay.

If there was a silver lining, it was in the filet mignon and all the trimmings stocked on the Belknap for a state dinner that wasn’t. Instead of going Russia’s way, the beef was left for the American sailors--and such among the presidential party as felt like eating.

Saturday’s storm was bad, but neither crippling nor unusual for Malta in December. The last one as nasty--or a bit worse--whistled ashore on Dec. 8, 1988, according to meteorologist Agius.

Windsurfers’ bright sails lent an optimist’s splash to the gray warships Saturday on an opaque afternoon in a bay that, in May, 1535, sheltered 190 Turkish war galleys come to test a Christian citadel in what became one of history’s great sieges.

The Turks chose the bay, then called Marsasirocco, because it is protected from the northeast winds of the sort that blew Saturday. The invaders left defeated in September, hurrying to get home: the winter Mediterranean, all sailors know, is no place for war galleys.

On land, Saturday’s storm flooded local streets, rearranged power lines and dismasted Maltese, Soviet and American flags with anarchist’s elan. But it did not disrupt the weekly drawing for the national lottery, and it never even dented Saturday-night hilarity at watering holes around the island.

Raisa Gorbachev, though, didn’t like the weather much. First, she canceled a planned visit to St. John’s Cathedral and museum in Valletta to see a painting there by the Italian Renaissance master Caravaggio. Then she rescheduled it with scant notice.

“They said she wasn’t coming, so I had gone home for lunch . . . when the prime minister’s office rang to say she was coming--in 20 minutes,” said Msgr. Carmero Scibarras, curator at the cathedral. “I live five miles away, and although I got back as quickly as I could. . . . Well, she didn’t have to wait long, and she seemed very pleased by what she saw, and very interested. Her signature in the guest book is hard to read, though.”

The Soviet first lady also called on a working-class family living in a government-subsidized apartment in the Santa Lucia neighborhood near Valletta.

She got mixed views from neighbors like Alexandra Micallef. “Raisa seemed nice, but she spoke only Russian, and her bodyguards were like raging bulls,” she said.

More impressed was 4-year-old Desiree Micallef, who got a kiss and a bar of Soviet chocolate.

“Desiree says she’ll keep the chocolate as a souvenir. We’ll see how long that lasts,” said her mother, mopping away VIP mud left over from the visit.

Such mud-making weather, explained forecaster Agius, was the usual winter result of a high pressure system over the western Soviet Union pushing cold air and strong winds into Eastern Europe, through the Aegean Sea and into the central Mediterranean.

White House landlubbers fussed about 60-mile-per-hour winds, but the strongest gust recorded at the weather station near Valletta was 49 knots, or 56 m.p.h., with sustained winds of 35 to 40 m.p.h., according to Agius.

“They would have been much higher over the open sea, but less in Marsaxlokk because the southeast exposure protects it from northeast winds,” Agius said. Last December, the wind blew over Malta from the northeast at 80 m.p.h.

But the world wasn’t watching then, as the 350,000 Maltese are aware--to their acute embarrassment. The improvident storm rained on a historic national festa , marring a warm and otherwise flawless Maltese welcome for the American and Soviet leaders.

“Sunday will be better,” Agius promised, “and by Monday, it will begin to clear.”

By then, nature willing, George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev will be gone.

Until then, an ageless, time-defying quality will mark this soggiest of summits: Everybody talks about world peace, but nobody does anything about the weather.