Pacific NW Weather

[jssailem]

I’m sitting in sunshine waiting to board the Clinton - Mukilteo ferry. It is a beautiful spring day. I enjoyed a morning ferry ride out of Port Townsend across the Sound near Admiralty Inlet.
Daybreak


Tosca, @mermike’s Yamaha 33 at anchor


The skyline over Port Townsend bay.


The next couple of days look promising opportunities to get in some early boat work before the chilly end of March.
**************

The Ides of March 2024

The next 4 days will have you “Sing’n in the sunshine”. Broadly speaking and depending on location, should we garner 3 or more days of 70+ degree temps, it will be the longest stretch of such temps in March since 2005 - nineteen years ago. Lucky!

Sunshine and warm afternoons on tab now through Monday. It still looks mild & dry Tue, however, models suggest a cold trough may move in from the NW overnight Tue into Wed Mar 20 - the Spring Equinox. The coolness may also produce a shower or two, esp over the Puget Sound region. For now, we’ll go with a cooling off period Wed & Thu next week before a moderately damp period returns to both end the week and the month.

Showers return across the PNW during the Mar 23,24 weekend. New foliage will get wet; soil temps will drop. Although not quite as cold, the chilly wx of early March is charting to return during the last week of the month. It looks wet Mon through Thu, Mar 25-28. FROST possible Fri and / or Sat morning, Mar 29,30 if the sky clears in your area.

California will again receive rainfall during the Mar 23,24 weekend and on through the following week. We do not see flooding issues, just more rain & mountain snow.

Enjoy St Patrick’s Day weekend while sing’n in the sunshine.

“Smiles never go up in price nor down in value.”

-Rufus

 

[Hello Below]

As always, thanks for your insightful and accurate weather reports. I await your future forecasts as I near my 3 April haul out date.

 

[jssailem]

Thanks Len…
This year is starting promising. I spent a few hours on SV Hadley this week. It was December when I had last started the engine. I was a little apprehensive. Took a few crank sessions and a bit of fuel, but soon she fired up and after a couple of huffs ran smoothly for about 45 minutes at the dock. She got up to temp (155º F) and settled in with the prop engaged. At low speed. That was Wednesday. On Friday, before I had to head home, I gave her another opportunity. She started right up. This time a little easier. And again I put her in gear and ran her for 20 minutes. She chugged along tied securely at the dock. Engine temps in the target zone, oil pressure as well.

I’ll be back up around the end of the month for a sea trial and work on rebuilding the interior.

This is looking to be a sailing year.

 

[jssailem]

I’m now in Central Oregon for the week. What a glorious day. Blue skies. The Cascade snow capped mountains were dressed in all their glory. Temp in the low 70’s (22’s for you Metric folk). Played 18 holes of golf then met my 11 yr old grandson and we had a Soccer goalie and forwards shooting training session in the local park. What a hoot to see these 5 kids who showed up at the park in action.

 

[mic98034]

Here's a great link to a very informed daily forecast/discussion of PNW weather.

https://www.youtube.com/@PacificNorthwestWeather

 

[Screen Saver]

Forecasting is skill I certainly don't have and yet one I think has few measures of its performance as far as I can tell, at least in this general area. While there is much historical data and yes I understand history does not translate to a forecast the availability of some historical data even when we have the tools still eludes me. I keep a couple of years of grib files I take every day covering most of the pacific which I use for some basic planning. As another example there is a climate plugin for OpenCPN, this plugin plots historic storms cyclones hurricanes etc where you can filter on category, type, month and it appears on your chart, but it stops as I recall at 2018 and the developer of the plug advises he can no longer get the data. Google earth has a number of selections and one can scroll back through different images. To be able to scroll back through wind and sea state for example on google earth, or back through grib files, or current files on an image would be great for planning. Given the data Im sure is available it its disappointing the tools are not there. To correlate which month historically has the highest percentage of 15 knots from the south with nothing over 20knots, and the least rain is the best month for me to sail from Fiji to the Marshalls for example. All this data is available Im sure but its not (as far as I know) in a useable collective format. Personally I think forecast modeling at our level often doesn't fit the cruising environment, due to land impacts, words like "winds can be 50% stronger" are not helpful. I think forecasting methodology has probably improved immensely but the presentation, availability and applicability to us has a long way to go. Just my personal opinion.

 

[jssailem]

Interesting thoughts.
If I understand, your desire with regard to weather needs is to have a historical understanding of major storm events in your region. This is to enable you to plan your cruising over month long periods.

 

[Screen Saver]

Interesting thoughts.
If I understand, your desire with regard to weather needs is to have a historical understanding of major storm events in your region. This is to enable you to plan your cruising over month long periods.

Yes correct that was a small example. In fact the plan is over 12 to 18 months, in two hemispheres looking at the seasons timing and winds from Sydney, to New Caledonia, Fiji, Marshalls, Micronesia Palau, RjaAmpat for the upcoming trip. Imagine if you had your best chance for your ideal winds and least rain. I currently try to do this to a lesser extent via a spread sheet. I think it give me my best chances

 

[jssailem]

I’ll spend more time exploring the South Pacific weather. There is a fellow, smart weather guy, in Hawaii. Has a website he set up while studying for his Doctorate in Florida. Dr Levi Cowan.

Tropical Tidbits

Tropical weather and Atlantic hurricane information, analysis, and forecasts by Levi Cowan.

www.tropicaltidbits.com

He might be someone to check out.

What you’re identifying is something more like a Farmers Almanac for cruising sailors in the South Pacific. Almanac.com Homepage
I have not seen anything like it for sailors.

 

[jssailem]

The challenge is the many weather watchers are looking at the short term data. Monitoring near time events.
You mentioned GRIB file database. I hav never searched back. I am always looking forward. Perhaps one issue is storage. GRIB files needed to look at the immediate. A 3 day forecast is MegaBytes in size even for a small area. It is the way weather forecasting is developed looking at small squares of area from the surface up.

Measuring the changes in the space. Then linking that data to the next square and the next. They get a snapshot of a region with all the individual bits and then create a mathematic model that identifies the bits and the processes that are working on the bits. The magic for the many is when they can present the data in a graphical form that can be interrupted by the average watcher.

Not really helpful for your query should I spend the next 60 days in Fiji, but helpful to look at the 15 days it might take to get there. I have found LuckGrib to be a powerful cruise planning tool. Able to predict the weather sailing route with reasonable reliability. It can help you optimize your route planning. I used it to guide a recent cruiser across the Atlantic from the Canary’s to the Lesser Antilles. Uses Grib files. Does the math to optimize your sailing. It might be helpful.

 

[Screen Saver]

Yea I just had a look through his imagery for example which is certainly good but doesn’t actually seem to cover south of the equator which a good third of this trip. I also noted his analysis Tools for historical data that does actually cover the south Pacific effectively ends 10 years ago ( as does the openCPN plug in), and infact the last few he has there the links are broken. Im guess perhaps he completed his Doctorate.
Yes your right about the Farmers Almanac , it has Temperatures and Rain, it just needs wind & current added, some filters and some geolocation data, easy when you say it like that
Yes my Grib files used to go back 5 years covering all the pacific and parts of the Indian ocean. But I found I usually only looked back 2 or 3 years, so I settled on that and its about 8GB. This mornings file was 23mb. 40S-40N and 80E-160W my cruising ground, and I pick up Pressure, wind, seatemp wave height & rain over 7days. Now with Starlink I should be able to do this off the coast and between countries, where as before I was down to a few K over SSB. Im trying to pickup currents as well, but at this point that’s individual and not stored.
Luckgrib looks like a great tool, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a windows version which I’m heavily intrenched in but I will certainly dig around there some more.
I attached a couple of Screenshots I run on my PC and plotter.

 

[jssailem]

Here is the current data for the South Pacific on Tropical Tidbits.

GFS Model

GFS model forecast of MSLP & Precip for Southwest Pacific

www.tropicaltidbits.com

Your the “Regions” tab to get the location you want.
Her is the Southeast Pscific.
GFS Model