One last update - looking better!

Temperatures have trended up all week, and the latest forecasts mostly have the high tomorrow near 60F! Even better, the morning temp. is much higher than earlier, probably at or above 55F when we're rigging and registering for the morning race.

Winds are still almost steady just over 10 mph, although there is some chance they may be a bit lighter in the morning and build into the early aftrenoon.

Rain is still a possibility, so bring good foul-weather gear.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

See you tomorrow!

Not much change in the forecasts. Still a high temp. in the mid-upper 50's, wind just over 10 mph from the west or northwest, some chance of rain.

Let's hope it stays dry! (I'm mostly an iceboater, so optimism comes easy to me...)

As they say, "See you at the windward mark!".

Cheers,

Geoff S.

No surprises

By now all the short-term models have predictions for all day Saturday. Interestingly, not much has changed since my first posting.

Summary:

• Temps: cool all day. In the morning, probably around 50F rising to a high around 55F-60F.
• Winds: probably fairly steady all day between 10 mph and the low teens from the Westerly sector.
• Rain/Clouds: probably rain at some point. Almost certainly it won't be brightly sunny.
  

The good news is that the wind will be at worst perpendicular to the shore at the landings, so we should have a fairly sheltered place to rig and congregate.

If you're interested in seeing some real-time data from the area, the UW Space Science building has a set of instruments on it's roof with an applet that updates graphs every 30 seconds (click the "Metrogram" button on this page). Wunderground has data from the airport, as well as a number of personal weather stations around the area. Channel 15 (NBC) also has "Weathernet".

Cheers,

Geoff S.

---

Details:

The National Weather Service (NWS via wunderground) is currently predicting the temperature Saturday will start out around 50F, rise to a high just below 60F, then slowly drop to around 55F in the evening. Winds will start at around 5 knots and build slowly over the day to about 9 knots; swinging from the WSW to WNW or NW during the day. A steady 34% chance of rain all day.

The NGM model predicts slightly warmer temps, starting in the mid 50's and peaking around 60F. Steady winds of about 13 knots from the NW all day. A bit higher chance of rain at around 50%.

The AVN model (one of my current favorites) predicts the temps. will start around 50F and rising to a cool 55F, then slowly decline. Winds steady at around 10 knots (my experiece is the AVN under-estimates wind strength slightly) from the NW backing to the West. They don't give precipitation probability numerically, but they show chance of rain in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon.

Accuweather has the temps. starting at 50F and peaking at 57F. Winds 11-12 mph swinging from the WNW to West. Their chance of precipitation bounces between 39% and 57%, but their text interpretation claims only cloudy during the day, with a chance of rain in the early evening.

Microcast (via WKOW) is very pesimistic on temperatures, with 40F (brrrr...) in the morning witha high of 54 in the afternoon. They have the winds mostly steady 11 mph from the NW, with slightly less in the middle of the afternoon. No precip. percentages, but they show a chance of rain all afternoon.

First "short term" forecast info.

Still no major changes in the forecast; that probably means the weather patterns are well established (the maps look that way, too) and there probably won't be a big surprises. The bad news is that means the likelyhood of having a sunny 70 degree day is almost nil...

The high temp. is still holding right at 60F with a 30%-40% chance of rain (although at least Accuweather is calling for "times of sun and clouds"). The winds are looking to be more steady over the course of the day at just over 10 knots from the NW.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

Water temperature

Because Lake Kegonsa is relatively shallow, it warms up relatively quickly. During the above-average temperature periods recently, I was hearing quite warm surface temperature readings. Dave Lewis reports a very reasonable sounding 55F surface temp. he measured on Monday. Given the cooler weather between now and he weekend, I doubt the water temperature will get much above that.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

No big changes.

No big changes in the forecasts (as expected). The chance of rain seems to be showing up in more forecasts, but the percentage chance of rain hasn't changed much (around 30%-50%).

I'll post an update tonite if we get some "first results" from the short-term models.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

Five days to go!

Now that Saturday's races are only five days away, all manner of "5-day Forecasts" claim to predict the weather. Not surprisingly, not much has changed since yesterday.

Summary: High around 60F, winds aroud 10 mph, cloudy, maybe some rain.

The really interesting information will start to be available about 50 hours before Saturday(tomorrow evening). That's when the "short-term" models like the NGM, Microcast, and AVN will start to predict Saturday's weather. My experience is that the best prediction is to look at the trends in as many forecasts as possible and compare them to the actual weather the day or day-and-half before the regatta. The computer models especially seem to steadly converge on their final prediction. If a model's predictions aren't consistant from day-to-day, or they don't predict the weather the day or two before the race well, then they're generally not "locked onto" the current weather pattern. Luckly, many of the models use very different mathematical techniques, so it's rare that all of them will be way off (and there are always the human forecasters to watch, too...). FWIW, the weather patterns over the west-coast don't look very tricky, so I'm cautionsly optimistic that we'll have good forcasts a couple of days out.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

---

Details:

Wunderground (NWS): No change. High temp around 60F. 30% chance of rain. NNW Winds peaking at 11 mph at noon.

MRF (SSEC): No change. High 63F. ~30% chance of rain. Winds 11 knots.

Accuweather: Still predicting a high temp. of 61F, and winds at 12 mph from the NW

WKOW: same old... High 61F, partly sunny.

Long Range Forecasts for Sat.

It's a bit far away from race day (Saturday the 14th), but I thought I'd start tracking the weather forecasts anyway. The number of forecasts with any wind information that go out more than about two days is pretty small (two), and I don't put any trust in their predictions, but here goes anyway...

Summary: Cool (~60F), partially sunny, light/medium winds from the NW.

As we get closer to the weekend, I'll post some updated entries with some of the more accurate forecasts.

Cheers,

Geoff S.
DN US-5156/Laser 145234/Renegade 510

---

Details:

The National Weather Service (NWS via wunderground) is currently predicting Saturday will be a cool (60F). The wind will start out light in the morning (5 mph), peak at 11 mph at noon, and decrease to 7 mph in the evening; all from the NNW. Possible precipitation.

The Medium Range Forecast model (MRF via the UW Space Science Dept.) predicts a high temp of 61F and winds of 11 knots. It also has a chance of rain.

Accuweather also predicts a high temp. of 61F, partially cloudy, and wind at 12 mph from the NW.

TV Channel 27 (WKOW) predicts a high temp. of 61F and partly sunny.