By Mike Godsey

This La Nina year has brought exceptional winds to Baja’s Sea of Cortez. Typically the winds in the El Sargento Los Barriles zone is an everchanging mixture of northerly winds from high pressure in the Great Basin and the local sea breezes generated by heating in the local inland valleys. And the only role of the North Pacific High is as a spoiler sometimes sending WNW winds that blow offshore pushing the “good” N. wind away from shore randomly.

This year the North Pacific High has been exceptionally large and frequently it was stacking isobars over Baja producing NNW winds in the Sea of Cortez. This happened even when the Great Basin was blanketed by low-pressure and was not contributing to wind for Baja’s East Cape.

Today, March 27, is an example of all the Baja wind machines were working in concert. So we have NNW winds from the North Pacific High + N/NNE winds from the Great Basin High + Local sea breezes. And as a toping for the wind recipe we have strong NNE winds at 1000 feet aloft that add a gust factor and help push the winds to the beaches.

This graphic shows most of the story: