Weather: Sunday August 15, 2010

Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sarah Kindly Prepares the BBQ

Sunny Skies and a Barbecue

Satellite Image With Wave Height

A combination of satellite imagery and weather forecasts are critical information in our cruise planning.
 

Satellite Image With Wave Height

Burgers and Sun

Members of the science party enjoying a BBQ for dinner. Photo by Carlos Sanchez

Burgers and Sun

SUN!! Calm seas – a Sea State 0 to 1 today. That’s 2 sunny days in a row and a strong potential for another one tomorrow. In celebration, we’re having a barbecue and our fine and intrepid chef, Sarah, is up to the task (with all due cautions).

For the weather geeks: we have only about 3 mb pressure differential between us and the coast, so our winds today have been in the 0 to 10 knot range. I see lots of happy faces from people who, today at least, don’t have to work just to stand up. I must admit the foul weather we had earlier did provide some isometric exercises for everyone.

Tomorrow we could see some swell from systems up in the Aleutians (the infrared satellite picture from NOAA NWS kindly annotated the wave heights and you can see the where the clouds are moving) so the ship might move around a bit more later tomorrow. It's good the swells are holding off, because we need very calm weather to do some work changing Jason’s configuration.

We’ll see a bit more wind and swell in the coming days, but that’s getting a little far out.

From the R/V T.G. Thompson, 46ºN, 130ºW

- Skip Denny, Ocean Engineer