A few decades ago, we could not predict when the counterclockwise vortex would rotate and shift the Bay Area's summer coastal winds from prevailing mild northwesterly to mild southwesterly winds. For wind sports enthusiasts, the direction of the coastal winds determines which launch sites are windy and which winds are strongest within the bay. So people north of the Bay Bridge hope the eddy will persist, while people along the coast and on the peninsula hope it goes away.
Eddy currents can essentially change their position and do so very quickly. They can spin quickly and sometimes die just as quickly. Dust devils can do all of these things much faster. As you watch this video of the Dust Bowl, imagine predicting its rapidly changing fate.
While the vortices near Golden Gate are larger and slower, they are just as unpredictable.
Over the years, WeatherFlow-Tempest meteorologists have become very good at forecasting
Development of vortices and their location. But we still can't predict when they will die.
Check out my extended predictions for tomorrow, Friday, July 25, 2024, above.
Sounds like I'm pretty confident that the medium wave vortex is gone. In fact, the death of an eddy depends on the northwest wind on the coast.
This animation shows the Monterey vortex quickly disappearing while the Golden Gate vortex persists. This shows how difficult it is to predict when a vortex will disappear. Sometimes they disappear very quickly, like the swirls at the bottom of the image, they can disappear within minutes.
Because the variables that cause eddies are so complex and difficult to predict, my predictions for tomorrow could easily be wrong. This chart I made at the beginning of the current vortex shows some of those variables. We need to change nearly all of these variables so that I forecast tonight tonight that a northwest ocean wind pattern will develop tomorrow.
