Author: Mike Godsey

West Coast Wind Blog: Cut-Off upper low impacts Southern California and Bay Area surface wind forecast.

Much of early October saw the Weatherflow iwindsurf.com/ikitesurf.com forecasts barely changing from day to day for Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. During that time marine layer clouds clogged the Bay Area and the Southern California bight much like June Gloom. The cause of this stagnant weather pattern was the Rex Block discussed…

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West Coast Wind Blog: Atypical October marine layer intrusion reaches from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada.

A prolonged period of mild southerly winds due to lingering eddies and the Central Valley thermal low expanding over the Northern California has keep the marine layer very deep recently. This first half of October has been more like a classic “June Gloom” than the antiquated phrase “Indian summer” for October weather. Today is exceptional…

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West Coast Wind Blog: Rex Block brings June Gloom to San Francisco in October and stagnant wind pattern.

Have you noticed that our San Francisco Bay Area forecast text has barely changed recently? Almost every day there is mention of the Central Valley thermal low over the coast and a chance of an eddy and largely absent NW ocean winds. Before you attribute the repeated forecast text to forecaster laziness consider the Rex…

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West Coast Wind Blog: Eddy enhances Treasure Island winds as it moves closer to the Golden Gate and dies.

Yesterday saw a sudden appearance of an eddy around 8 AM west of Bodega. You can see that happening in yesterday’s blog. Todays blog’s first image shows the eddy from its near dawn birth to its death near nightfall. This blog concentrates on how that eddy jacked up the winds at Treasure Island and Berkeley…

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West Coast Wind Blog: Teleconnection: a quarter of the world away Typhoon Merbok triggers an unusual September rain event for San Francisco.

A teleconnection is jargon for a series of events that link a weather event in one part of the world to another weather event in a distant part of the world. Sometimes teleconnections last months or even years but this rain-delivering teleconnection is a brief event. In this case, Typhoon Merbok, east of Japan, indirectly…

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West Coast Wind Blog: Hurricane Kay & Southern California imagery

As you have probably noticed we have had some weird wind/weather patterns in recent years. But this week has been exceptional for weirdness.  This graphic shows how anomalous a weather pattern is compared to historical norms. Lots of weirdness today. For you math wizards that means the major wind makers, Hurricane Kay and the North Pacific…

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