This May, we’re experiencing winter-like rainfall, winter-like snowfall and record cool temperatures.
The only thing missing is a Pacific-like storm in the winter, with deep low pressure and strong winds.
Well, there will be no shortage of tomorrow: A powerful Pacific cyclone will make landfall on the British Columbia coast and damaging, damaging winds could hit the coast and northwest Washington.
Even the country of Puget Sound will get a piece of it.
The low point will make landfall north of Vancouver Island around 8 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday), as shown on the map of predicted sea level pressure at that time (see below).
The solid line is the isopressure line, the isobaric line. Where there is a steep slope (large variation in pressure), strong winds are forecast. Guys, there’s a LOT of isobars out there.
Winds will be intense over the ocean, with gusts near the low center possibly reaching 50-70 mph.
I expect no Alaska cruise ships to pass through this area tomorrow morning. It can reduce passenger’s appetite.
Check out the wind gust forecast at 5 a.m. Wednesday. More than 50 mph over the Pacific Ocean and through parts of Northwest Washington. Be about to very windy in San Juans, Victoria, and east of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
From City of Seattle WindWatch
And then as the low center moves east through south BC, strong winds will roll east into the Juan de Fuca Strait and gusts around Puget Sound (see win forecast at 2pm Wednesday)
Seattle WindWatch
The latest Seattle wind forecasts indicate a chance of wind Wednesday morning and afternoon (see below). The red line is from UW’s high resolution prediction system…and usually the most ingenious. It predicts gusts in excess of 40 mph in exposed locations across Seattle. With the leaves on the tree, expect some branches to fall.
Seattle WindWatch
How usual is it to have such an event in May?
Quite unusual. The figure below shows the forecast pressure at 11pm tonight at about 800 meters above sea level (solid line) as well as anomalous standardization of the wind at that level (color). Such anomalies from climate conditions are expressed as standard deviations and are quantitative measures of how normal a weather event is. Impressively, the wind anomaly amounted to 5 standard deviations, which is unprecedented for the 30-year period used in the calculations.
