Not as bad as last year but it will get your attention starting on Tuesday when it will get to 90°F. Wednesday will be the warmest at 93°F and after that it will slowly back off to the low 80s by the 1st of August. Compared to the rest of the country, we shouldn’t complain.
The surface analysis chart and sat pic for today show our weak (1030mb) Pacific High elongated from 38N 158W to 43N 146W. The sat pic gives us a nice view of Post Tropical Cyclone Estelle at 23N 130W as it continues to degrade. Most of the Pacific Cup boats have finished, with the PacNW contingent representing us very nicely. The Vic-Maui boats are finally starting to finish with five boats due in today but some boats are still 700 miles out. That’s 16 and 18 days since they started and the Awards Banquet is tomorrow. As we predicted, the later starting big boats in each fleet totally dominated the racing with both Pyewacket and Peligroso sweeping all the honors.
With high pressure offshore and low-pressure inland, we have an onshore flow that will peak this afternoon and into tomorrow morning with westerly gale force winds in the Strait of JdF. There will be some trickle-down northerlies of 15-20 knots in Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound in the early evening with less wind in the rest of the Salish Sea.
By mid-Saturday morning conditions will have eased over the entire area. This will hold until mid-afternoon Saturday when the onshore flow will once again start down the Straits. This will bring westerly winds of 15-25 knots to the eastern end of the Straits easing by midnight,
Sunday morning the pressure gradient will have eased bringing light conditions to everywhere except the Strait of Georgia which will see a NW breeze of 15-25 knots coming down from Campbell River. A weak onshore flow will develop in the Strait of JdF in the late afternoon and early evening with light northerlies in the central Sound.
Have a great weekend, use sunblock, and be safe 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)