A few weeks ago, I showed up for a lesson on what was a fairly windy afternoon. Nick said that given what he wanted to accomplish, it might not be the best day for us to go flying. While I never like to hear that, I do understand why he said it and I do trust his judgment. Before we made the final call, we sat down at the flight schools computers to check the weather.
I pulled up the usual sources and found that conditions varied greatly in the area, but that the winds definitely seemed to increase as we got closer to the practice area around Stockton, where it was reportedly gusting around 25 knots. We quicly came to the conclusion that it would be more productive if we stayed on the ground, but as one last check of the conditions Nick showed me a page on the USGS web site where you can see a dynamic graphical model of the winds in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. A picture doesn’t do it justice, you have to see it in motion for the full affect. The best time to look is in the afternoon (Pacific time) when the afternoon winds have picked up.
Pretty neat huh? What’s interesting to me is that you can see the influence the local topography has on wind speed and/or direction, with areas visible where the wind quickly accelerates or changes direction. It is simply a model that describes the flow of wind at a given time, so I guess that means that it simply shows you what it thinks the winds are doing based on observed data. It models the winds at the surface so it is of minimal use for flight planning information, and who know how accurate it really is, but it is cool!
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