Good morning tired gorge people! You windsurfers and kiteboarders get a break for the next couple of days, but you boat owners are going to be opening your wallets at the gas pump. Remember to bring your warmest wetsuit; the river’s only 57 degrees. That’s downright cold, you know.
The upper level low off the coast banishes high wind kiters and windsurfers for the next couple of days. We’ve got an unseasonable, deep low pressure system to our west. The Gorge needs high pressure out there to work. With this setup, we’ll see light east winds to flat conditions this morning. Like I said, good wakeboarding and waterskiing weather. Afternoon brings 10-15 westerlies from Stevenson to Hood River; enough to play if you have a really big kite.
Tomorrow and Saturday bring more morning waterski weather and light afternoon westerly breezes. We may see some good westerlies with the passage of a front Saturday afternoon. This is a wait-and-see thing at this point.
Speaking of waterskiing, let’s talk about snow skiing, there’s still 92 inches at 5200 feet, so backcountry skiing remains an option for you tele and AT diehards.
All that snow on the mountain is kicking up meltoff for whitewater kayakers and rafters. The Hood River is at 1500cfs, the White Salmon is at 4.71 feet and the Little White is at 810 cfs.