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 *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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