Red Sky at Night

Red Sky at Night

The adage ‘Red sky at night, sailors delight’ falls miserably short of the mark this evening. Tomorrow, a small but intense low packing 50-60 knot winds will be just north and east if where this picture was taken. No sailor I know would delight in a 60 knot 45S blow. Moreover, as this is a small, fast moving disturbance, the sea state,will be chaotic as the rapidly changing storm face winds will be generating wave travelling in all directions.

John Bullas and I have been watching this low develop for the past ten or so days. Formally, it is not a low but a frontal wave embedded in and moving along a tight baroclimic zone. This didn’t mean a lot to me but some of you might remember John is a regular rocket scientist who once proved to me that 1+1 > 2. (He cheated a bit by mixing binary and base ten numbers but it was still mighty impressive!)

This morning’s trough and the frontal wave due tomorrow are the reason I’ve been working my way south. I wanted to avoid both these systems and the associated gale and storm force winds for obvious reasons. What may not be so obvious is that I would have been forced to run off south by the northerly winds. I would have ended up at about the same latitude but likely much worse for wear.

All of the above is best summed up this evening as ‘Red sky at night, sailors take flight.’

Follow my tracks in real-time:
https://bit.ly/svseaburban