If you want to take a very quick flight across the Pacific from Tokyo to Seattle, book your tickets on Sunday.
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Normally, such flights take about 8.5 hours. But on Sunday you’ll do fine in under 8 hours.. perhaps as short as 7.5 hours – and I suspect the route will be more direct than usual.
The reason: a nearly continuous strong jet stream across the Pacific Ocean.
As a reminder, a jet stream is a relatively narrow strong wind in the upper and lower troposphere, typically found between 25,000 and 40,000 feet above sea level.
To illustrate, here are the predicted winds (in knots) at around 38,000 ft (200 hPa pressure) at 5pm PDT Sunday.. Red and brown are the strongest winds- – with strongest winds of 150-175 knots (175-200 mph)
A hot air balloon released from Japan can cross the Pacific Ocean (about 4,700 miles) in about a day and a half.
The jet stream is the location of clouds and storms, and the cloud forecast map (simulated satellite image) at 5pm PDT Sunday shows a continuous band of clouds across the Pacific Ocean.
For fun, I used the NOAA Hysplit system to calculate three-dimensional air trajectories, following the path of the previous air to Seattle at 3 p.m. Sunday at 8000 meters and 10,000 meters above sea level. sea water (see picture). I plotted the trajectory of the air for the last 60 hours.
Seattle on Sunday will come from Japan!
From Mount Fuji to Mount Rainier in about 50 hours. And before that, North Korea and Russia.
