• Sailing is all about the Weather.

    Big into the exploration of Atlantic Hurricanes since Katrina came uninvited into his world, James (Jim) Gurley (JamesG161) has followed every Tropical Storm birthed in Atlantic, Gulf and Caribbean waters since. Being a boater, he knows that we often need more time to prepare than we get from the TV weather folk. Jim relies on the science of storm development to share early warning info with friends and fellow boaters.

    Early in 2018, Jim and John Shepard, (JSSailem) started to chat about the weather data available. John asked Jim to help forecast Pacific NW storms, and this morphed into discussions on weather forecasting.

    For John, sailing in the PNW is sometimes hit and miss. One day is ugly, then a string of beautiful days but no wind, followed by a series of blue-sky days and 12 knot breezes. Being ready for those great sailing days means you need to look to the Pacific Ocean and what is brewing. John has been into Pacific NW Weather since the 1970’s when his first PNW November storm hit bringing more than 40 days and 40 nights of continual rain.

    Together we want to share information, new APPs, safety, and thoughts about letting the weather help you. Identify some of the resources for sailors and help prepare you for your next sailboat outing.

    It is far better to go out on the water knowing what to expect in weather terms, than to be out on the water and see dark ominous clouds suddenly appear, unprepared.

Talk about wind speeds... SOLAR UPDATE

Oct 22, 2014
20,995
CAL 35 Cruiser #21 moored EVERETT WA
Maybe Milar sails would hold up a enough to get the boat going.
But sustained "Solar wind speed reached values near 600km/s " would tear the boat apart and make the pieces glow....

Late on 15 June, another geomagnetic storm has been recorded for solar cycle 25 (SC25). The source was a high speed wind stream associated with an extension from the southern polar coronal hole. Solar wind speed reached values near 600km/s, while Bz briefly peaked near -10nT. The coronal hole can be seen in the SDO/AIA 193 image from 13 June underneath when it was passing the Sun's central meridian.




Over the last couple of months, we have had already several instances when geomagnetic storming conditions were reached. On 12 May, there was even a strong geomagnetic storm following the arrival of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection. So how does this geomagnetic activity relate to the previous solar cycles (SC)? In the graph underneath (data from WDC Kyoto), for each SC since 1976 (SC21 thru SC25), and for the period covering 18 months after the respective solar cycle minimum (see SILSO: Solar Cycles Min/Max | SILSO ), the number of geomagnetic storming days (vertical axis) are represented and binned per level of Kp from Kp=5 to Kp=9 (horizontal axis). Please check out the STCE SWx Classification page at SWx classifications | STCE for more info on geomagnetic indices and levels of geomagnetic activity. Though the numbers for June 2021 are not complete yet, the overall tendency is clear. The graph shows that -so far- SC25 has been geomagnetically more active than the previous SC24, in particular concerning the number of days with minor storming. Nonetheless, both SC24 and SC25 numbers pale in comparison to SC23 and especially SC21 and 22. Note that no extremely severe storms have been observed yet, in none of the 5 SCs which is fairly OK considering we are still at the start of the SC, but also because this kind of storms are isolated events and thus better evaluated over a much longer period, e.g. an entire solar cycle.
 
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