by Mike Godsey, mike@iwindsurf.com & Matt Sounders A few days ago I wrote a blog about the strange Cut-Off Low at ≈ 18,000 ft. feet between Hawaii and Baja that was tracking towards San Francisco where it would bring epic winds. Then how the Cut-Off Low would create explosive winds for the Gorge First –…
by Mike Godsey, mikeATiwindsurf.com Did you notice fast the sky changed today from crystal blue to cloudy? That event is something we have been forecasting for days. Clearly, something is about to happen. Remember the old days when it seemed that wind was just about the pressure gradient? And while the forecasts were crappy more…
When looking at gradients in the Gorge, we often look for a thermal low, connected to the Great Basin, which often sits in the Columbia Plateau most of the summer. But in Spring, when upper level lows are present, a surface low pressure gets created out ahead, under the highest Differential Potential Vorticity Advection (DPVA)….
The winter 2019-2021 season in Baja was atypical in a number of ways. It started off with a bang in November but from that point on the winds were often unreliable unless you were on foils or big kites or sail. Or if you were there during one of the few strong wind periods. But…
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 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 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 Sometimes you will notice a caveat in the forecast that a band of high clouds streaming from SW or WSW may come over us and spoil the wind but stopping the inland valleys from heating weakening the local pressure gradient. Usually when I mention clouds I am talking about low-level clouds…
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, mikeATiwindsurf.com The National Hurricane Center has upgraded the approaching low pressure storm to a Tropical Storm named Raynond. Below is an animation of ECMWF model of the storm’s trajectory as well is a summary of all the latest model forecasts for trajectory and wind velocity. Note that there…