by Mike Godsey About a week ago I mentioned a wayward Cut-Off Low located between Hawaii and Baja up at ≈ 18,000 ft. At the time it looked like it would march towards Northern California and impact the Bay Area. Turn out I was right on. This animation shows the Cut-Off Low as well as…
by Mike Godsey In normal years the bulk of the strong wind at the kite and windsurf sites in the Los Barriles and La Ventana areas comes from high pressure in the Great Basin area of the USA. However, the 2019-2020 winter season has seen lots of days when an unusually robust North Pacific High…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com I think the daily wind forecast and the wind graphs below from Tuesday, Dec. 17 capture the wind quality in the late morning and early afternoon pretty well. BUT… if you ventured about 1/2 mile outside at La Ventana you got away from the shifty up and down N to WNW…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com Many years ago I spent 3 months per year doing underwater research on Pomacentrids around the islands of the Sea of Cortez. One thing that always struck me was how incredibly fast the weather could go from calm to strong winds. The next 24 hours will brings such a change as…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com Take at this Baja California forecast valid for Thu, Dec 12 2019 Once again our ikitesurf.com sensor network and the ASCAT satellite imagery show continued El Norte winds coming down the Sea of Cortez. Unlike a typical El Norte these winds are from 3 sources: 1. NNE winds from the North…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com Do you like gambles? So here is a big meteorological gamble. Today Dec. 1, 2019, I am forecasting a big El Norte winds event for the entire Sea of Cortez for Monday, Dec. 16. Normally I would not stick my neck out so far but this is a major event and…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com If the cloud band you see in this animation keep moving towards La Ventana it could spoil winds today. All models have the clouds only reaching near La Paz today but watching the satellite imagery it looks to me that they might get further south. So watch the skies to the north and…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com With a bit of luck and a Cut-Off Low that behaves according to the models we see a 3-5 day El Norte blow for La Ventana and Los Barriles, Baja Sur. This graphic for Saturday Nov. 30, 2019, shows the setup. 1. First, notice the huge storm over the mid-USA. This…
by Mike Godsey, mike@iwindsurf.com Since I wrote this blog yesterday all the models have agreed that the storm is likely to impact Baja’s East Cape. Ever wondered why do you see really vague forecasts like this Baja Forecast today? “Some models have is just wobbling around south of Los Cabos and dying. But the ECMWF…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com Here is yesterday’s blog about this storm This blog tells why the storm forecast was so iffy earlier in the week This animation show todays imagery of the storm at dawn Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019. As you can see there is a hint of it developing a circular rotation but…