This time of the year certainly doesn’t disappoint. The weather here and around the country has been very interesting and shows little or no sign of becoming normal. The Great Lakes aren’t frozen over, the east shores of the Lakes are still getting lots of lake effect snow, the exceptional drought in the Southeast and California is all but gone and in the Pacific Northwest we are getting the effects of a “traditional” La Niña, if there is such a thing.
The surface charts for the weekend and into next week especially the one for tomorrow morning show an almost ear drum popping feature with a 1050MB High located over the Great Basin in the Western US. For perspective, the highest pressure ever recorded was a 1083.8MB in 1968 in Agata, Siberia. A fact made more interesting in that this was measured at 826 feet above sea level. This measurement was also made at the height of the Cold War so independent, third party verification was out of the question. I digress, anyway with that high pressure located where it is you can see why they have high wind warnings (70 knots with gusts to 80) up for Santa Ana winds thru the passes to the East of Southern California. That’s high enough that if taken on the beam of an 18 wheeler, it can be blown over, impressive. You can also see that this feature, while not moving very much will weaken as another low pressure system moves slowly towards the West Coast by late Tuesday and into Wednesday. What is interesting is that the interaction between these systems has the effect of weakening both which is good from any number of perspectives. You can also see from the 500MB charts that this isn’t going to change very much over the next few days. It will keep the relatively warm air coming into the PacNW while keeping the very cold Canadian air on the other side of the Cascades.
Over the weekend in the Pacific Northwest we’ll see this play out in what is becoming common for this winter. We’ll have fairly strong east-southeasterly wind off the coast (Small Craft Advisory) with some breeze showing up in the north Sound, east end of the Straits and up into the San Juan Islands. For the mid and south Sound light and variable winds until the next system gets closer on Tuesday or Wednesday. In between you can see another weather rule for the Pacific Northwest play through and that is that the best chance for a strong northerly is the first day the ridge of high pressure establishes itself over the area. Overall, it will be a pretty nice weekend in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, just about a perfect weekend for the Seattle Boat Show.
So, in the meanwhile, go to the BIG Seattle Boat Show! I did a quick walk thru yesterday and there is plenty of new, really cool stuff to see regardless of what kind of boater you are. As I said, I’ll be working at the show in the NMTA information booth Saturday and Sunday so please stop by and say hello. Also, I got some very good questions this week regarding potential trends in the upcoming weather. Thank you and I’m happy to answer those for you.
Enjoy the weekend.
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)