As If There's Anything Else To Report On...

In the course of keeping regular business hours, Seattlest looked at pretty charts last night / this morning. This happened in between looking out into the back yard and hoping that none of the neighbors' 50-foot trees snapped and crushed our palacial estate. First courtesy of WS DOT, wind readings from the 520 bridge. We found them very encouraging.

How quickly we become spoiled. We saw the winds flirting with the 50 knot mark and waited and watched. We knew it would top that mark if we just waited long enough --and if the wind just applied itself. We were also egged on by the following:

Finally, it happened! We found ourselve cheering wildly for the weather.

Then we got really geeky and started poking around some of our more hard core haunts. Here are a couple from the National Data Buoy Center (Seattle station). First, wind gusts (times are GMT; subtract 8 hours to get PST). One can tell that this plot is the Product of Science because of its precision. No settling on a line of best fit here; there are minute variations to track. Also, observe the no-nonsense typography. No self-respecting Microsoft bloatware worth its bloat in bloat would have used Courier.

And finally, a chart not to be missed. These are winds over the open ocean. The wind barbs on the chart point into the direction of the wind. Look at the barb starting at its point and goind toward the end with the tick marks; this is the direction from which the wind is coming. Each long tick mark indicates 10 knots (about 1.1 MPH); each short tick mark indicates 5 knots. Add the values together and you'll get the wind speed at that point. Notice the barbs just west of the Columbia's mouth; the pennants indicate 50 knots.