Today’s sat pic shows it all with a dramatic cold front getting ready to come ashore on Saturday backed up by a large area of cool, unstable air. The surface analysis chart shows the extent of this cold front going from roughly the north end of Vancouver Island all the way to Hawaii with a secondary cold front right behind it. The big waves pounding California will continue.
If you string today’s charts together you will see the bad news as moisture continues to avoid the Pacific NW and with the upper airflow(500MB) coming in from the SW the freezing level will stay well above 4,000ft. This means there will be no snowpack building in the mountains of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. For you skiers, it could be a great winter to take up sailing!
For wind, we can expect the strongest breeze to be in the Eastern part of the Strait of JdF on Saturday with 15-25 knots of south-southeasterly. Sunday and Monday the breeze will be light over the Salish Sea.
The other chart of interest will be the 48-hour surface forecast chart with a Roser Low Index of 12 systems visible on the chart. Unfortunately, as we mentioned above, a weak ridge of high pressure along the West Coast will keep most of the rainmakers from coming ashore, and those that do make it will be substantially weakened. We can expect the next system to come into the Pacific NW on Tuesday with not much rain.
Have a safe and Happy New Year!
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)