Sunshine, on my shoulders, makes me happy.
SURF:
Pretty sure I can see the sun again. But it may be frozen. Regardless, sun's out, water is somewhat clean again, and the surf is cleaning up.
Today we had leftover NW windswell and a new small SW for chest high surf. This weekend is looking small and clean as both swells back off and we're left with waist high+ combo swell. At least the skies and water will be clear.
Water temps are a chilly 58 degrees and the tides this weekend are 0.5' at sunrise, up to 4.5' at lunch, and down again to 0.5' at sunset.
FORECAST:
Not much surf for the work week but models show some storms the next few days that will send surf towards the weekend.
First up is small storm that will send us waist high+ NW swell late Wednesday the 26th. That will fill in more for chest high sets on Thursday along with small waist high SW. The NW will last into Friday.
We have a larger storm on the charts that may give us head high+ WNW surf around Sunday the 2nd- along with rain unfortunately. I'm pretty sure one of these days we'll get big clean surf again. Just not sure when. Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.
WEATHER:
Heaps of snow in our local mountains yesterday and lots of cold temperatures at the coast. Feels like Wisconsin around here. No, seriously. The sun is here to stay for a few days fortunately but we won't get over 60 degrees for a majority of the week. The warmth finally kicks in towards Thursday with temps near 65 but models show another storm approaching for the weekend. Get outside while you can! And for those of you playing along at home, here's where we are for rainfall this season:
- Newport Beach: 16.05" so far. Seasonal average is just 13.6"!
- Oceanside: 12.4". Seasonal average is 13.3"
- San Diego: 10.5". Seasonal average is 10.3"
Basically anything new from this point on will definitely help with our wildfire season this summer and fall.
BEST BET:
Next Thursday with new NW and clean conditions. Bigger next weekend but it may be stormy...
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
According to the Washington Post last week, the jet stream that brought us beneficial rains last week also brought unexpected air travelers a boost. The jet stream, the high-altitude air current along which storms travel, is furious. The river of air was clocked at more than 230 mph over Long Island on Monday. That measure comes from the 250 millibar pressure level, meaning it was at a height above 75 percent of the atmosphere’s mass. It sets the record for the fastest 250 millibar wind speed ever recorded over New York and, probably, the country.
The 250 millibar level generally tends toward 30,000 feet to 35,000 feet. That’s about the same height at which commercial planes fly. Unsurprisingly, the jet stream can have big implications on how quickly aircraft reach their destination. With a speed max currently over central Pennsylvania, airplanes flying through the jet will either be sped up or slowed down big time, depending on their direction of travel. It’s like the moving walkway at the airport. You have your own forward speed, but if you continue this velocity in an environment that is itself moving, it can propel you at an impressive rate.
A Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles to London peaked at a whopping 801 mph last Monday evening 35,000 feet over Pennsylvania. “Never ever seen this kind of tailwind in my life as a commercial pilot,” tweeted Peter James, a jet captain. It appears that’s a record for the Boeing 787-9 twin jet, which in the past has flown at speeds up to 776 mph. The ordinary cruising speed of a Dreamliner is 561 mph, with a maximum propulsion of 587 mph. Any speed gained on top of that is thanks to Mother Nature’s helpful boost. Although the plane didn’t remain in the “jet streak” — the zone of maximum wind embedded within the jet stream — for long, it still arrived 48 minutes early. And you might notice something suspect about the 801 mph reading — it’s above the speed of sound (767 mph). However, whether air travel breaks the sound barrier is dependent on its airspeed — not its ground speed.
Ground speed is the speed an airplane has relative to a point on the ground. It can be visualized as how quickly the plane’s shadow would move across the surface. Airspeed, on the other hand is the difference between ground speed and the wind speed. “On a perfectly still day, the airspeed is equal to the ground speed,” NASA explains. “But if the wind is blowing in the same direction that the aircraft is moving, the airspeed will be less than the ground speed.” In other words, an airspeed exceeding the speed of sound was not attained. Commercial aircraft are generally not designed to fly at supersonic speeds.
In addition to the 801 mph ground speed clocked Monday, several other notably high speeds were recorded. An LAX-JFK Delta flight Monday night hit a ground speed of 678 mph at 39,000 feet over the Ohio Valley, while a 737 from Chicago to New York passed 700 mph at 8:43 Eastern Tuesday morning. Likewise, flight times from Dallas to Boston dipped below three hours Tuesday, with an Embraer ERJ-190 twin jet achieving 739 mph in the jet streak. Looking ahead, Chicago to New York/Boston routes will be shortened to 1 hour, 24 minutes Wednesday instead of the usual nearly two-hour flight time. But odds are that if you’re flying west, you won’t find the jet stream helpful. Departing flights out of New England and the New York area will probably incur 20 or 30 extra minutes of travel time, either slowed by the jet streak or forced to divert around it.
For the jet stream to get cranking this much, there must be a big storm brewing somewhere, right? Surprisingly, it’s the opposite (the closest developing storminess is in the western Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday). Storms cause the jet stream to bend, cresting and dipping into waves that ride across the Lower 48. Just like kinking a garden hose, it causes the flow speed to decline. In the absence of large-scale weather systems, a zonal west-to-east jet is free to gather considerable speed, much like how we reach our fastest highway speeds on straightaways. The jet stream can usually get to speeds this high only in the winter because temperature differences between the north and south are maximized. Temperatures on Tuesday hovered around minus-10 to minus-20 in eastern Canada while soaring well into the 80s over Florida. Such large differences in temperature (and pressure) power the wind.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
This is what you get one you cross surfing with snowboarding. I call it 'snowsurfboarding' or something like that.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
The Bomb
Jumped On the Padres Bandwagon. Again.
Going Snowboarding Until The Surf Gets It's Act Together
