Author: Mike Godsey
West Coast Wind Blog: San Francisco heat wave dies with Marine Surge and an Eddy
by Mike Godsey The coastal San Francisco Bay Area has seen an abrupt end of an oppressive heat wave during the last 12 hours. This occurred first as a Marine Surge arrived for Southern California waters bringing strong southerly winds, cooler air yesterday and after dusk fog. Then this morning this pattern was reinforced by…
West Coast Wind Blog: Rare “Dry” Marine Surge hits San Francisco Bay Area.
A nagging upper high pressure has kept the San Francisco Bay Area hot for days. But far to the south it has been clear for several days that a Marine Surge was gathering steam for a lunge northward to the Golden Gate. (Here is a time-lapse video of a Marine Surge as seen from the…
West Coast Wind Blog: Marine Surge poised to end Bay Area heatwave
There is a lot of waffling in my forecast today since there are so many variables in play! A huge dome of high pressure at ≈ 18,000 feet has toppled many record temps in Northern California in the last few days. All this heat has caused low-pressure to expand over the East Bay making for unreliable…
West Coast Wind Blog: Southern California heat, fog, eddy and weak winds
by Mike Godsey The Central Coast and Southern California had a great spring and early summer with the North Pacific High’s NW winds hanging nearby most day. But this weak a massive upper level high pressure over the western USA brought an end to those winds. This first graphic shows the upper level high pressure…
West Coast Wind Blog: NW wind vs South storm wind in June!
by Mike Godsey, Indecisiveness I have inserted my forecast for today June 11 in this image so that you can see the indecisiveness in my forecast. The reason for this is that the San Francisco Bay Area is right intersection between 2 massive weather systems. First let’s take a close up view first to see the forecasting…
Why is wind forecasting so challenging compared to temperature or sunshine: Excuses, excuses!
by Mike Godsey and Matt Sounders Have you ever noticed that meteorologists are usually pretty accurate about the temperature and the amount of sunshine but are so often way off when it comes to wind? Look at this graphic of the weather projections for today Sunday, May 28 by 10 major computer models for Treasure…
Visual anatomy of a major NW ocean wind event: California
Sometimes pictures tell the story better than lots of words. Usually, in the San Francis Bay Area, Central Coast and Southern California the winds are very different at different sites but today almost every site sees stronger than typical winds. Take a look at the model forecast for the Bay Area today at 4 PM….
West Coast Wind Blog: Very atypical eddy off Golden Gate in April.
Until 25 years ago summertime eddies off the Golden Gate were uncommon. Since then these counterclockwise air masses have become increasingly common and some summers they are a dominant force in determining the wind distribution in the Bay Area. This increasing eddy pattern is associated with the increasing frequency of the North Pacific High developing…
West Coast Wind Blog: Cut-Off low impacts wind and weather for much of west coast due to weather traffic jam.
Last week there was somewhat atypical weather and winds for the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and the Columbia River Gorge. The Gorge saw very frequent blue skies and warm dry air plus westerly winds. Southern California saw many days of strong NW wind that curved into the coast. While San Francisco saw a…