Re: [Paddlewise] Home weather stations

From: Doug Lloyd <douglloyd_at_shaw.ca>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:21:47 -0700
> Doug said,
>
>>
>> Well yeah, if I lived in beautiful, warm, So Cal, I'd care less about
>> weather monitoring, wind chill, barometric fluctuations, etc.
>
> Doug,
>
> We really do have to worry about the weather here. After all, it rains in
> February and it's very hard to forecast the weather when today's weather
> will be the same as yesterday's and the forecast for tomorrow is the same 
> as
> today.
>
> Steve Holtzman

Well, Duane had a point about over-gearing, but I like my Kestrel 2500 as a 
back up watch and main watch while underway in the 24 hour mode, as well as 
verifying wind speeds. I keep meaning to try it out for determining water 
temps. The altimeter is handy for hiking. I had a "Dick Tracy" pop up 
anemetor / barometric trend indicator but it was sacrificed to the water 
gods, and it always felt uncomfortable strapped around the cuff of a drysuit 
wrist. As for Duane's wet finger methodolgy, I got no problem with that. If 
he has a problem with my plethora of gear, I figure that's his problem, not 
mine, thogh we wouldn't want newbies interpreting subliminal messages that 
safe kayaking requires lots of gear.

I'm still alive after 28 years of hard core year round yaking on the coast. 
I absolutely love to engage the elements in a variety of ocean domains which 
necessarily brings weather into the mental engagement category - one would 
hope. All these aspects to kayaking make the activity supremely less mundane 
and somewhat trumps the purely adrenaline motivated impetus some of us are 
prone to, at least for me. Though, I haven't got into the GPS stuff yet. Do 
I use a wet thumb for that? :-)

I like to keep a weather log. It's probably the only mature thing I do sea 
kayaking, other than multiple back up plans for full-on assaults. As for BC 
weather, or weather in the PNW in general, following pressure slopes, 
assessing the rapidity of developing systems and understanding directional 
wind shifts, I'll take the variety over your endless summers any day. Snow 
in late April aside, at least for camping. I already was involved in one 
major rescue due to snow in April a few years ago. Funnily enough I bumped 
into one of the participants in that little misadventure just this morning; 
he works as a Coast Guard auxiliary pulling yakers out of the drink now. How 
cool is that?


Doug L
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Received on Tue Apr 22 2008 - 22:22:00 PDT

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