With the strengthening sun and increased warming of coastal land, the coastal sea breeze is becoming stronger on the Washington coast.
Today is a good example.
As a reminder, sea breezes occur when coastal land becomes warmer than the adjacent ocean. Warming causes air to become less dense, which results in lower pressure over land, which drives the onshore rush of air....the sea breeze (see schematic).
Consider the winds at Hoquiam Airport today (on the central Washington coast).
Wind speeds were near calm around 7 AM, but rapidly strengthened during the morning to around 15 mph around noon. After 6 PM, as the land cooled, the winds weakened. Classic sea breeze.
The wind direction during the onshore sea breeze period was 270°, which is from the west.
At the leading edge of the sea breeze (called the sea breeze front), air is pushed up, often forming clouds (see schematic).
Those clouds were evident today. The high-resolution visible satellite image around 10:45 AM shows the line of clouds at the front edge of the sea freeze.
The Washington Coast is an excellent location for sea breezes because the water is relatively cool (around 50°F during the warm season). Once the land gets 5°F or more, warmer than the water, the sea breeze circulation begins to rev up.
Finally, high-resolution weather prediction models can skillfully predict sea breezes.
To illustrate, here is the 3-day model prediction of windspeed at Hoquiam starting today at 5 AM. Beautiful daily ups and downs of wind speed from the sea breeze.
Oh, this is a really interesting post. The illustrations make total sense. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the approximate maximum distance from the shore at which sea breezes are detectable and/or have a substantive effect on other sensible weather parameters (e.g. temp, rh, dew point)? Do locations adjacent to the shorelines of the inland marine waters also experience sea breezes?
ReplyDeleteIf being able to smell the sea in the air is indicative of a sea breeze, then my time spent in Greenwood could offer an example. I remember being able to smell saltwater at various points along Greenwood Ave, but if I headed east to Aurora the smell became less apparent. Greenwood Ave is a little more than a mile east of the sound and Aurora is about a half mile east of Greenwood.
DeleteWhen I first moved out here from South Dakota, I was used to humid, sticky, summers, high humidity. I found myself working at a manufacturing plant on the Guide Meridian Road between Bellingham and Lynden and I could not get over this cool breeze in the middle of summer, I’m like “ this is so awesome You guys gotta be kidding right is this normal ??”
ReplyDeleteThank you for talking about the sea breeze. Its one of the things that makes being out at the coast during the Spring and Summer so enjoyable.
ReplyDelete