We all knew it had to end and sure enough, it looks like this is the weekend where you’ll need to be thinking about changing those mooring lines over to dealing with our winter southerlies. As you can see from the 500MB chart, the jet stream, the heavy 564 line is now almost a straight line going right across the Pacific and curving north just off our coast and into SE Alaska. This will allow frontal systems to have a more direct shot at the Pacific Northwest. The current surface forecast shows just such an event headed our way on Saturday.
We are already seeing rain on the Doppler Radar at Langley Hill on the coast which will make landfall this evening and be fairly widespread over Puget Sound by tomorrow morning. This will mean southerly to southeasterly breeze in the Sound with light and variable breeze in the Straits. By mid afternoon tomorrow this will all start to transition to a more post frontal situation with a westerly coming down the Straits (15-20 at Race Rocks) while we’ll have a westerly flow through the Chehalis Gap which will then be a southwesterly breeze in the South Sound. What does that sound like? Let’s not see all the same hands.
Yep, a classic fall convergent zone which will set up from 1500 through the early evening with plenty of rain from Seattle north.
Sunday looks better but still with scattered showers around. Winds will be light in the morning however by late afternoon we have 10-15 knots of northwesterly, so don’t put the summer mooring lines away yet just be prepared for anything.
Bruce has raced and cruised the Pacific Northwest his entire life. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Washington in Biological Oceanography and learned meteorology “to keep from getting kicked around on the race course.” Bruce spent nearly two decades as Associate Publisher for Northwest Yachting Magazine, retiring in mid-2015, and was the chairman of the board of trustees for the Northwest Marine Trade Association in 2014. (photo of Bruce driving Playstation is a bit dated, but cool)