Author: Mike Godsey

West Coast Wind Blog: Beautiful Baja Sunrises, a love/hate relationship.

Mike Godsey During El Niño years it is more common to have the clouds of the Sub-Tropical Jetstream over Baja Sur. While La Ventana often has nice sunrises these jet clouds This often create spectacular sunrises in the La Ventana area making the village a window to the eastern sunrise. Sometimes the clouds linger the…

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West Coast Wind Blog: North Pacific High gets to intimate with Baja so the wind fizzles.

Forecast Decoder by Mike Godsey: Yesterday, Matts’s forecast, somewhat cryptically, talked about an overly-friendly North Pacific High. Remember the old cliche about “Too much of a good thing”? Normally having a smallish winter-sized 1-2000 mile-wide North Pacific High near Baja is good for the Sea of Cortez winter winds. But as spring approaches and the…

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Caribbean Wind Blog, Part 3: Island topography and Trade Wind strength.

VERY ROUGH DRAFT The topography of a Caribbean island and the strength of the trade winds can have a significant impact on each other. Here’s how: https://wx.iwindsurf.com/map#15.834,-76.217,6,297723 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032113006771 Trade winds:https://wx.iwindsurf.com/map#15.834,-76.217,6,297723 Island topography: The Venturi effect in general: The Venturi effect is a principle in fluid dynamics that states that when a fluid (like air) is…

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Caribbean Wind & Reef Blog, Part 3: “Wind reversal” damage on Bonaire and Curaçao.

Mike Godsey “A mighty tremor roused us from sleep at 3 pm in the SandDollar Condos. The ground vibrated beneath us, as colossal waves crashed against the shore. It was unmistakable – the reversal had finally come. Feb. 5, 2024” For starters I should mention that mild “Wind Reversals” can be a blessing since, as…

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Caribbean Wind Blog, Part 2: First to ply the Trade Winds – Indigenous People

In 1492, Christopher Columbus, driven by his ambition to chart a westward route to Asia, set sail from the Canary Islands with three ships. Relying on the steady easterly trade winds of the North Atlantic high-pressure system, his crew made landfall on October 12th on an island in the Bahamas. Though Columbus believed he had…

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Caribbean Wind blog: Overview of Caribbean Trade winds, part 1

Several WeatherFlow-Tempest zoomable Model forecasts for the Caribbean for today can be found here: This first blog will cover some of the basic factors causing the Caribbean Trade winds. In future blogs I will be using the island of Bonaire to illustrate Caribbean wind patterns. Photo by Mike Godsey Today is a somewhat atypical winter day in the…

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