We all know that San Francisco Bay Area forecasts are sometimes wrong. So all of you have learned to look for obvious hints that forecast has gone bad before you make the long drive. The most obvious hint is to look at how your site’s sensor and nearby sensors are ramping up. But that only…
You rarely expect a perfect forecast. There are far too many variables and far too few weather stations, especially for the vast Pacific upon which to base a forecast. But you rarely expect to have something as basic as the wind direction wrong by almost 120 degrees. I achieved that infamy yesterday, June 9, 2022. My…
Spring on the west coast is usually fairly predictable even on the large scale. In March the North Pacific High’s average size increases and it moves closer to Baja Norte and wave folks migrate to fables Punta San Carlos and the endless wave. On the California coast, spring means mild winds and gentle weather. Then in…
You know the melody by heart. On the California coast, spring means mild winds and gentle weather. Then a storm hits, passes, then departs. And as the rain ends, clouds thin and strong NW clearing winds rake the coast and curve in the San Francisco Bay. They are strongest the first day, mellower the second…
Hi Gang! See updated imagery at the bottom. Kerry is forecasting today but I am following the trajectory of the marine surge zooming up the coast from Southern California. In past decades foggy marine surges brought the end to mid to late summer heatwaves and made the north tower to Sherman Island corridor rip. But…
The Sunday, May 22nd 7:30 AM Southern California forecast was an all-time epic fail. As you can see in the image below at 7:30 AM I said that “the North Pacific High’s surface NW winds struggle to reach to reach shore. And my table values showed the Long Beach Area only reaching the…
Long long ago, before Call of the Wind and later windsurf, windsurfers in the know monitored Ken Poulton’s weather page for real time informaiton. Back then the key of information you could derive from his page was the current pressure reading for Sacramento in the Central Valley. We all knew that the stronger the SFO-Sacramento pressure…
Customer, fxop asks: “Why is Palo Alto typically more northerly than other mid-peninsula sites? Hi fxop, I love low-hanging fruit type questions I can actually answer. See the graphic below where I have simplified the wind flow with white arrows (Unfortunately, the graphic below is for a more W not NW day so the depicted…
In this first image, you can see that the North Pacific High’s surface NW winds are roaring down the Northern California and Central California coasts this morning. But notice how all this wind bypasses Southern California waters and there are actually SE winds in the Southern California bight. Where is all this NW going? And why…
Hi Gang, The graphic below is for a blog I will do later next week. But it is more timely today as our pressure gradient pattern changes a bit. The key concept is that when the NW ocean wind reaches the coast it flows through gaps that are the easiest pathway towards the maximum pressure…