Good morning sailors!
Looks like the 3am forecast writer at NOAA has a sense of humor:
A REGIME CHANGE MAY OCCUR EARLY NEXT WEEK AS MID-RANGE MODELS
CONTINUE ...
I'm not sure whether he's referring to Burma/Myanmar, Russia, The United States, or the dominion of Mother Nature. Whichever one it is, I'm looking forward to hearing about it on
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me this weekend on NPR, where the pledge drive may finally be over!
Anyway, there's a reason most people don't forecast this time of year. Models tend to be wrong, and wind speeds tend to be unpredictable. Having said that, I can tell you we'll see west winds until Sunday, when high pressure is expected to build, bringing clearing back to the PNW and flat gradients to the Gorge. By Sunday, however, a regime change may happen, throwing all forecasts into the chaos of anarchy.
Today, however, Mother Nature's monarchy holds, sending west winds in the 20ish range to the eastern Gorge.
Tomorrow she fights the weather proletariat, sending all sorts of chaos into the upper atmosphere. A massive low climbs the Oregon coast, bringing huge waves and strong winds. Isobars line up around all sides of the low; as it passes west of us, these gradients send the Gorge into wind madness. Winds to the west of the center will be straight of out the south, and winds to the south of the center will be WSW. Basically, this means Arlington is the best bet for sailable conditions. We'll see what happens, though. This is a winter storm, and winter storms are unreliable for wind. Storms of this size are also quite ofton accompanied by driving pouring rain, like a SWAT team sent to make sailing painful.
With the fiesty proletariat low removed from our region, Friday's oligarchical wind (driven by many factors) is steadier, but weaker. Without the power of a storm at its heart, the oligarchy wind just won't muster up the excitement of Thursday's proletariat storm.
In the long range models, it looks like high pressure will rule the land for a few days, like a benevolent dictator. (is there such a thing?)
Regimes... systems of government... sometimes I think I'm a little strange.
Anyway, just wanted to say thanks again to all of you for the trip outa here. I'm daydreaming about all sorts of fanatastic places: Morocco, Vietnam, Canary Islands, Western Australia, Brasil...
One last thing, and thanks to Ron Martin, the King of Free Stuff for this one:
Free D'anjou pears: email tickner@gorge.net:
"We have pears that are not going to get picked unless I know that
someone wants some. If you have some bags or boxes that you would like
to fill, I will climb the ladder while you hold the bag. After 4:15 pm
weekdays or this weekend, October 20-21 will work at least part of
each day."
Have a great day today!
Temira