Wednesday, April 25, 2007

SA PSA - Edited

In the spirit of being a helpful triathlete and competitor, take a look at the most recent observations of a water buoy just off the peer at the site of the St. Anthony's Olympic Tri:

Looks like we've been gaining about a half degree a day for the past few days, with little change in the forecast temps - so by Sunday, I'll predict a high of about 77 degrees, and in the morning, it should be around 75.6 - 76 degrees...a comfortable wet-suit swim!

Wind data is a bit more complex - it's just plain impossible to rely on any trends to forecast something that changes so quickly. Sunday is supposed to have a low of 68 and a high temp of 83 with a 10% chance of rain - nearly perfect weather conditions! If the 10% chance of rain equates to an overcast morning, then the winds will be even less than what we've had in the morning for the past week or so - clear sky's usually mean a windy day around here.

16 knots equates to about 14 mph winds (these are steady wind speeds below, not wind gusts) and it looks like the average over the past few days has been roughly 8 knots, for about a 7 mph wind speed. They are pretty consistent out of the west - if they stay that way, St. Petersburg should block a lot of it, and keep the waters calm. It's that wind out of the east, like we had last year, that causes all the troubles.

I'm looking forward to awesome conditions on race day - and wishing everyone the best of luck!

Edit: I was anonymously correctly corrected for my inverting the formula for Knots to MPH winds - 16 knot winds = 18.4 mph, and 8 knots is half of that or 9.2 mph. Never know I was an engineering major...

9 comments:

The Stretch Doc said...

Ahhh, the wind... steady winds I guess is ok, but gusts! forrgetta bout it..

I'm in for an Olympic in 5 weeks! just signed up!! YAhoo!!! Bigun!!!

rockon`

momo said...

as it gets closer to cda, can you figure out this stuff for me too??? in graph form? ;-)

its looking like it should be a beautiful day for a GREAT race!

Duane said...

Good luck and hope you really have a blast!

S. Baboo said...

I'm hoping for good race conditions this weekend too but unlike you I'm not researching it, just wishful thinking. I really should look at the predictions...the place i'm going had a winter storm warning yesterday with blowing snow.

Di said...

nice graphs baby

Anonymous said...

1 Knot or nautical mile is equal to 1.3 statue miles. So a 1 knot wind would equate to a 1.3 mph wind, 10knots = 13mph and so on etc etc.

Bolder said...

i have weather chart envy.

and, St. Anthony's envy.

and, just plain old-fashioned red hot envy...

ENVY!

Green Eyed Lady (aka GEL) said...

Weather chart envy? SA envy? I have blog envy - truth is, I just wanted to be on your blog in the worst way, man! The graphs ARE nice but I think spreadsheets would work here, too...
;)

Unknown said...

DUDE.... STOP WIT DA CHARTS! you're supposed to bring the beer. not the CHARTS!!!