As you can see from this morning’s Sea-Tac radar, there is a lot of rain coming down up from Mount Vernon north and into southern BC. This is the tail of a weak weather system and we’re not yet done as another weak cold front will hit the coastal buffer zone tonight and into Saturday and pretty much dissipate leaving us with nice weather for the rest of the weekend. The onshore flow we’ve had will continue as a result of a weak high-pressure system offshore and weak low pressure on the other side of the mountains. As usual, this will generate a pretty good westerly breeze in the central and eastern part of the Strait of JdF, probably in the 15-25 knot range. Some of that will become a southwesterly breeze of 15-20 knots in the western part of the San Juan Islands.
August 23 500MB 
August 23 Surface Analysis 
August 24 Surface Forecast 
August 25 Surface Forecast 
August 26 500MB 
August 27 Surface Forecast
The interesting part of today’s weather is 96-hour forecast which shows a thermal trough developing inland which will create an offshore flow bringing warm (80-degrees plus) temperatures to western Washington towards the middle to end of next week. Summer isn’t over yet! Plus, with some semblance of a Pacific High starting to set up offshore this may mean we are in for some very nice weather in September and maybe extending into the fall. The other reason for this optimism is todays 500MB charts which finally show the jet stream starting move down from its summer position up near the Arctic.
The wind over the rest of the Salish Sea will remain light and just about perfect for summer cruising so slap on the sunblock and go enjoy our incredible area.
ED NOTE: Sorry folks, but last week’s Brief never made it onto the Sailish because of technical difficulties.
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)