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Bizarro wind: The Wall and Crissy in images.

 
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windfind



Joined: 18 Mar 1997
Posts: 1899

PostPosted: Sun May 05, 2013 1:40 pm    Post subject: Bizarro wind: The Wall and Crissy in images. Reply with quote

Bay and Gorge gang,

Yep yesterday was a truly bizarro day wind wise. The Gorge having unheard of EAST winds at The Wall with gusts to 30 knots. And Crissy, which most forecasts had pegged as a heat wave day, saw WEST winds gusting to 40 knots and deep fog.

Basically, as George said, the Gorge had strong easterly winds way aloft from a clockwise spinning high pressure north of the Gorge.

While way aloft over California a counter-clockwise spinning Cut-Off Low created more easterly wind near the Gorge. But over the Bay Area that meant WSW winds aloft. It also induced at the surface a strong counter-clockwise spinning low pressure which created a powerful pressure gradient to the California Central Valley.

Take a look at the animation at the bottom and notice how the 2 winds aloft merged over the Gorge. To get oriented study the annotated imagery at the bottom to see this bizzaro pattern unfold.

Mike Godsey
iwindsurf.com/ikitesurf.com



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gmclean



Joined: 08 Mar 2001
Posts: 91

PostPosted: Sun May 05, 2013 5:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think I have only seen this pattern in the late fall when we get a short wave dropping over the ridge. Even then it seems to set up like this pretty rarely. Thanks for the nice graphics Mike and Ben. A picture is worth a thousand words!
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30knotwind



Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 239
Location: White Salmon, WA

PostPosted: Tue May 07, 2013 11:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do you have a graphic for the typical W gorge wind day, like today, tomorrow, Thurs?
That'd be cool to see.
Thanks,
Chris

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windfind



Joined: 18 Mar 1997
Posts: 1899

PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 8:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do you have a graphic for the typical W gorge wind day, like today, tomorrow, Thurs? That'd be cool to see.
Thanks,
Chris



Hi Chris,

Yep, below is video of yesterdays upper level winds. Wtf the wind is EASTERLY aloft! Disappointing huh?

You have to remember that this video and the previous one are water vapor images. They only show the wind induced cloud movement from 10K feet and above NOT the surface wind. Yesterday and today the upper level winds are easterly while west winds rip at the surface in the How can this be?

Well, the atmosphere is like a giant layer cake. Sometimes the layers interact and sometimes they are decoupled. Today they are decoupled, the bizarro east wind....coupled. Things like this make forecasting models and forecasters have less than stellar accuracy.

Today's winds actually are partially caused by those East wind aloft. There is a huge upper high pressure above the Pacific Northwest which has been creating all the warm weather. High pressures like this have clockwise spinning winds and we are below the East wind zone. This east wind aloft is not impacting us but all the heat from the high pressure aloft has set up at the surface a low pressure zone. You can see this in the graphic below with the low pressure in the Columbia Basin and high pressure from the North Pacific High and cool dense marine layer air to the west.

Hope this makes sense. Check out the Weather Blog link to the right for more articles.

Mike Godsey
iwindsurf.com



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30knotwind



Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 239
Location: White Salmon, WA

PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 10:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting. Thanks
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