Has it ever offended your sense of aesthetics that on days I forecast, some sites have nice tidy tables for the time slot wind values while other tables are ugly and all chopped up time slots?
Here is an example of a tiny vs ugly table.
There is a reason for this madness. Some sites especially Sherman Island, Pt. Isabel and 3rd. Ave. are prone to either fading overall or developing lighter launch sites winds in certain conditions.
Sherman Island often has a mid-day fade that sometimes occurs as early as 8 AM. In the old days I often made the long AM drive after seeing low to mid 20’s winds at the sensor then rigged only to find the
winds fading and not coming back to late afternoon. While on other days the wind blew all day. So when I fill in the Sherman Island tables, I chop up the morning and afternoon into 1-hour blocks rather than our default 2-3-hour blocks. This gives you my best estimate of when the wind may fade in the morning or build in the afternoon.
3rd. Ave. has a different type of problem. Sometimes when there are strong NW coast winds + Strong WNW winds just aloft + strong pressure gradient towards Bakersfield via Santa Clara Valley to San Jose to thru the Pacheco Pass 3rd. Ave. has strong WNW winds from the launch sites to the channel.
But often, one or more of these ingredients is missing, and if the pressure gradient towards Stockton dominates, the 3rd Ave. channel can have good winds while the launch sites are dealing with a hard-to-forecast combo of WNW wind battling W-WSW winds from the Hwy. 92 gap area.
Sometimes, I can find hints that this will happen in my morning and/or midday forecast. So, I chop up the afternoon table into one-hour blocks and give my best estimate of the fading time.
Pt. Isabel, and to a somewhat lesser extent Berkeley, can sometimes have a pronounced fade in the late
afternoon. You can ride great swell and wind out past Brooks Island, unaware that the winds are fading inside. When conditions are ripe for such a fade, I block out the tables in 1-hour increments and try to give an estimate of the fade time.
The goal of this ugliness is not always met, but at least it suggests that on such days, you would be wise to check the wind more carefully before venturing far from shore or making a long drive.