[Paddlewise] Weather-guessers

I've been sailing on the Pacific Coast for 54 years now, and I'll still
get caught by micro-squalls, usually embedded in a cold frontal passage
scenario, usually after I've confidently announced to all and sundry
that the low has passed. The other thing that's weird out here is the
way a big low will stall in one position for days at a time, while
smaller lows slide in under it, usually bringing 10 minute
storms/squalls of incredible intensity. You'ld think the big blow would
be with the big gradient, but the little stuff can knock you right down.
Probably urban legend, but Jim Little, a local TV weatherman who's a
sailor and a REAL meteorologist claims that the Upper Left Coast is
responsible for more suicides among his colleagues than anywhere else on
earth.

But Dave is absolutely right on with the notion of visualizing the "big
picture" circulation model and fitting the local current reality into
it. It gives me at least the illusion of understanding what's happening,
so I have something to take guidance from. And it's usually right. It's
just that the exceptions tend to stick in the memory.

Roger Korn, confined to warm dry spaces when it's perfect for paddling.

Dave Kruger wrote:
<snip>...
To maybe give a stroke in a fruitful direction for Clyde:  keep that
circulation model the meteorologist taught you in your brain and when
you
listen to the weather radio, try to visualize WHERE the low pressure
system
is, and translate your mental image into a cloud/wind pattern around the
low.  Then put your location into the picture.  As the low moves on
through, note the wind shifts (magnitude and direction) to figure out
where
the low has moved to, and re-visualize it.  Keep on doing that and
you'll
get most of it.  For me, just learning the pattern of wind shifts which
signals approach and passage of a cold front helped a hell of a lot. 
I'm
afraid some of weather science may have kinship with witchcraft!  <G>

-- 
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR
usually at least half-wrong about the weather
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