After experiencing strong NW winds from a massive 2500-mile-wide North Pacific High along the coast on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, it may seem peculiar to read about weak southerly winds for a storm system on Tuesday. However, this sudden shift in wind patterns is not uncommon and can be explained by weather phenomena that are…
Yesterday I made a rare forecast for almost every site in the Bay to blow since the pressure gradient to the Central Valley was pretty evenly split between Sacramento, Stockton and towards Bakersfield. This set up was covered in yesterday’s blog. As you can see in the imagery below most sites reached or exceeded the…
Forecasting wind for the San Francisco Bay Area is extremely tricky compared to the Southern California, Baja or The Gorge. All those sites usually have inbound wind coming from the coast heading inland and typically from one direction. The Bay Area can have NW or W or SW or SSW ocean winds. Plus it has…
Mild NW winds return to the coast and the pressure gradient is pretty evenly split between Sacramento, Stockton and towards Bakersfield so most sites see wind to the shore. Sherman Island is gusting over 20 at dawn as forecast since the marine layer clouds have crested the East Bay hills. But those clouds will retreat…
The North Pacific High was very active in Baja waters this spring but has provided scant strong NW winds for the Northern California coast this spring in March. This week a rapidly enlarging North Pacific High has formed north of Hawaii and will bring strong NW winds to the San Francisco Bay Area and the…
This winter we have seen the third year of a El Niño climate pattern. Indirectly this has often caused the average size and location of the North Pacific High to be atypical. Much of the winter the NPH has been larger, further northward and closer to Baja California than average. This first image shows the…
Today’s mild winds in the El Sargentoto Los Barriles corridor are due to a Cut-Off upper low in the upper-level winds that circulate around the world from mostly west to mostly east. Normally these winds loop North and south as they travel steering the surface weather systems and surface winds. Occasionally one of the southward-extending…
The image below shows the area from Hawaii to Alaska to Baja to Iowa. Today the huge North Pacific High you see in the Pacific only delivers mild NNW winds to Baja’s East Cape. But over the next several days part of that high-pressure buds off and forms a larger high pressure over the Great…
It was a dismal wet day for El Sargento, La Ventana and Los Barriles wind wise. This satellite imagery at 5:30 PM yesterday Jan. 31, 2023, shows that wind-killing cloud streamer of the subtropical jet stream.
In the image below note the North Pacific centered off the Oregon, USA coast and extending into Baja waters. Also, notice how its winds are far from us. Meanwhile, Great Basin high pressure is centered over Columbia River Basin in the USA. Both are making lots of wind but that wind is about 1000 miles…