This weekend is going to be a lot like last weekend in that we’re going to have breeze on Saturday with some sunshine and fairly mild temperatures. Regardless, if you’re going to be on the water wear your pfd and be prepared for the wind chill to bring those temps down into the upper 30’s and low 40’s. Brrrr!
Click on any weather map to enlarge and open slideshow.
The situation is much the same in that the front that is bringing us rain today is moving on to the east-southeast and a ridge of high pressure is starting to build. The barometer starting rising at about 0700 hours this morning so the ridge is moving in a little early and as a result we are already seeing northerlies on the Sound in the mid teens. This will continue to build tonight and we could see a steady 15knots with higher gusts on Saturday until late in the day. The breeze will tend to be out of the NNW and should be fairly steady from that direction.
By Sunday, the gradient will have eased and the breeze will be back down to 5-10 knots from the south however as the day goes on it will continue to die and do it’s all points of the compass routine as far as direction goes.
I threw in the Tuesday chart just because it shows that once again this year we’re are seeing a fairly strong high pressure area forming inland (1041MB) however we are also seeing a strong 1040MB High in the mid-Pacific plus it’s fairly round which indicates that it will tend to be more stable so it will push that fairly weak 1002MB low up into SE Alaska. From there that low will probably then drop back into the mid-US bringing with it more snow and more cold temps. The mid-Pacific High is interesting in that we normally don’t see that strong and that stable a High until mid-summer. True, it’s not setting up in its normal position either.
It is also interesting to note that for the year we are about 1” below normal for rainfall however with two major rain events in February we are about 1” above normal for the month. So is there any hope for the skiers? We better hope so and I think there is still a good chance we will be able to bring the snow pack up so that this summer won’t be quite so dry.
Have a great weekend and we will definitely have an in depth weather analysis for the Blakely Rock Race on the 7th of March.
