Bruce’s Briefs: Wx for 19, 20, 21, and 22 May. A cloudy but pleasant weekend ahead for the Sound, breezy in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

After a warm week, the onshore flow has returned and that has brought Mother Natures’ air conditioning back to the Pacific NW. It has also sent the smoke and haze from the wildfires in BC and Alberta to Eastern Washington. Take a look at the sat pic for yesterday.

The surface analysis chart shows that we still have a weak ridge of high pressure along the coast with a weak (1014MB) low-pressure system over Eastern Washington. This will keep the onshore flow in place well into next week. Also still in place over the Gulf of Alaska is that large but weaker low-pressure system with its attached cold front. There is a possibility the tail of the cold front may drag over the area on Tuesday. The 500MB charts show that this large low protrudes into the upper atmosphere and the jet stream is such that it won’t be moving very much.

The other interesting feature in the 500MB charts is the 96 hr chart which shows an upper level, cutoff, low-pressure system forming right over the Pacific Northwest, while the jet stream travels around this low and goes into southern mainland Alaska. This could make for a very interesting Swiftsure.

Winds for the weekend will stay a little on the light side for Puget Sound and Admiralty Inlet with some breeze filling down the Sound by mid to late afternoon. Wind in the Strait of JdF until mid to late afternoon will also be light however as the onshore breeze develops, it will blow in the Strait at 25-30 knots by early evening and hold until just after midnight. Sunday will see a similar pattern.

It is still a week until Swiftsure so anything could happen however, right now two models are showing that this could be a very long and very light Driftsure. So we’ll see.

Have a great weekend!

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