¡Buenos dias! Yesterday brought a nice bonus day to northern beaches, and the wind gauge at Rasta measured sustained winds of 14-16 mph for several hours. Southern beaches saw lighter winds, as the gauge at Baja Joe’s only showed 10-12 mph (see nerd note below). The forecast for today is another tricky one, as a couple of the models show that like yesterday, there may be just enough north background flow during the afternoon to give the northern beaches rideable wind, but others insist that the dreaded easterly winds will arrive by around noon and shut that party down. It’s a real dice roll, so my best advice is to be ready if we happen to get another bonus day up north today. Models are in much better agreement that light onshore winds will be the rule from Tuesday through Friday as the axis of an east-west oriented ridge of high pressure over the Eastern Pacific remains just to our south. Long-range model forecasts are in good agreement that the ridge will take a jog northward on Saturday, with solid north background flow returning here. Favorable north flow is then forecast to continue through next Monday.
- Today…Sunny. Northeast wind 10-12 mph…possibly higher on northern beaches.
- Wednesday…Mostly sunny. East wind 8-10 mph.
- Thursday…Sunny. East wind 8-10 mph.
- Friday…Sunny. East wind 8-10 mph.
- Saturday…Mostly sunny. North wind 16-20 mph.
- Sunday…Mostly sunny. North wind 16-20 mph.
- Monday…Mostly sunny. North wind 16-18 mph.
Nerd Note: Proper measurement of the wind is something that depends on the accuracy of the instrument, proper siting, and post-processing and presentation of the data. As I’ve mentioned before, the wind gauge I normally use for verification each day is located at the main campground. That gauge is a (very reliable) Davis Vantage View instrument, sited with no nearby obstructions, and the presentation of the graph was the world standard of 10 minute sustained winds. Unfortunately we lost that gauge a couple of weeks ago with the exodus to the north. A fellow kiter yesterday pointed out a website (tempestwx.com) where several Tempest weather gauges here are still listed as operational. Luckily for us there are gauges at Rasta Beach and at Baja Joe’s. The plots for Rasta and for Baja Joe’s show 5 minute lull, average, and gust readings. These are far more realistic plots than the weather underground plots, for example, the one at Rasta that shows gust and sustained winds that many times are the same reading, like the plot from yesterday (see graph below). This tends to give sustained wind readings that are typically 3-5 mph too high.
