It’s the Ides of May which really has nothing to do with anything except we now only have only 16 days until the start of hurricane season and yet we do have the chance of the first named storm of the season developing this weekend between Florida and Cuba. Plus a fairly gnarly typhoon slammed into the Philippines this week as if they didn’t have enough problems already. (Ed. Note: Bruce’s “Ides” sent me to an online investigation, and after extracting myself from the Roman calendar and the Roman gods, I am getting back to posting the weather….)
May 15 500mb 
May 15 Surface Analysis 
May 16 Surface Forecast 
May 17 500mb 
May 17 Surface Forecast 
May 18 Surface Forecast 
May 19 500mb 
May 19 Surface Forecast
Luckily for the Pacific NW, we are going to have a lovely day today followed by a moist but not a super-soaker weekend. Just enough to keep the lawn and freshly planted flowers happy. The surface chart today and the high-resolution satellite pic show the weak high-pressure system over us and extending down the coast. The sat pic also clearly shows a very well-defined low-pressure system with the attached cold front that will be with us starting tonight and extending into Saturday. By Sunday this system will be to the east of us with a weak trough of low pressure just off the coast.
Most of the breeze this weekend will be off the coast on Saturday with 20-25-knot pre-frontal southeasterly. The eastern end of the Straits of JdF will have 15-20-knot east-southeasterly most of the day Saturday however with frontal passage this will ease around midnight on Saturday. By Sunday this will become a weak onshore flow down the Straits which will slowly build over the day to maybe 15-20 knots in the eastern Straits by late Sunday afternoon. The rest of the waters will see mostly light wind for the weekend.
And then next weekend we’ll have our usual update for Swiftsure even if the race isn’t going to happen. We’ll also have post-Swiftsure virtual reports about how boats did on the race all done from the comfort of your office chair. Feel free to submit your report.
Enjoy a little quarantine time down on the boat to check mooring lines and fenders and as we saw last weekend, it’s ok to take the boat out and get some time on the water.
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)