This is without a doubt just about as much fun as you can have in February, unless you’re really into Presidents Day or Ash Wednesday……..Back to the weather.
Since my friend, overall boating guru and dedicated (decorated? Visualize Viking horned helmet, massive fur cape, battle axe and shield) WRPD veteran Chip Hanauer is once again in charge of this amazing event I thought it best to get his forecast for the weekend and WOW, am I ever glad that I did:
Chip Hanauer Official Weather Forecast for WRPD:
Sunny, 68°F, wind from the South Southwest at 2-knots, chance of rain less than 1%!
Bruce’s Brief (forecast):
Never one to doubt our fearless leader, I decided to do just a little bit more data verification. As you can see from the Friday morning surface forecast chart the cold front will have over run the warm front creating an occluded front that will be east of the Cascades by 0400 on Friday morning leaving us in a post frontal situation with a nice gap in the isobars over Puget Sound. 12 hours later, 1600 hrs, we will have both a warm front and a cold front in line to assault the Pacific Northwest this weekend. Just remember the old weather mantra, warm fronts are always ahead of cold fronts and cold fronts move faster than warm fronts. It looks like northern California and southern Oregon will take the brunt of this with the southern coast of Washington getting the high winds. With Poulsbo being strategically placed in the lee of the Olympics it looks like we won’t have to deal with a huge amount of wind. As you can see from the 1300 Hr MM5 Chart on Saturday, Poulsbo will have only 5-10 knots of wind from the S-SW.
By Sunday morning we’ll start to see the beginning of another front getting ready to come onshore. So even if you sleep in on Sunday morning and don’t leave until early afternoon, the weather will still be pretty flat.
I did get a question about tides so I have included the tidal current charts for Agate Pass on Friday and Sunday. I also ran the best departure times from both Shilshole and Elliott Bay using an average speed of 6, 10 and 14 knots. So you don’t have to look it up, it is 3.2 miles shorter to leave Elliott Bay and go around the north end of Bainbridge rather than going through Rich Passage and around the south end of Bainbridge. On Sunday since it is more scenic taking the south route if you can clear Rich Passage before 1400 hrs, go for it.
So all in all, Chip’s forecast looks pretty close. I was somewhat perplexed as to how he got to 68°F for Saturday however always the teacher, he took the time to explain to me a little know weather phenomena that can occur when you have a meteorologicalconvergence of near mystical personalities in the form of Chip, Dwight Jones, Sam Bisset, Tammy Mattson and Kurt Hoehne all in relatively close proximity. This convergence can reach a state of critical mass and with all the hot air that is formed in this one place this can cause a protective hot air bubble not unlike an inversion layer to form. According to Chip this has occurred before to the point that the EPA and Puget Sound Keepers Alliance are considering legislation requiring an Environmental Impact Statement to be filed before these individuals can all be in one place at one time.
Have a great weekend!
Passage Times Calculated from Elliott Bay Marina (click to enlarge):
Passage times from Shilshole Bay Marina (click to enlarge)
