Bob Blog

Bob McDavitt's ideas for sailing around the South Pacific.
Disclaimer: Weather is a mix of pattern and chaos; these ideas are from the
patterned world.
Compiled Sunday 29 March

More on the Australian Flood
There was a blocking HIGH in the South Tasman Sea, and it took several days
for a Low to form over NW Australia and the finally travel southeast across
Australia and kick that HIGH away. This meant that there was a squash zone
of strong steady onshore winds onto the Australian East Coast, bringing rain
that showed up on the weather radar from Bundaberg to Melbourne for days.
One way of looking at this weather pattern is to plot a time-latitude plot
of the zonal winds along the 145 to 155E longitude band (basically the
Australian east coast) as can be done at psl.noaa.gov/map/time_plot/ from 14
to 26 March. It shows that the on-shore easterly winds peaked from 20 to 24
March.

And a grab from Marinetraffic.com shows that as I write this the container
ship EVER GIVEN is still stuck in the Suez Canal:

And here is some GOOD news: Fiji have agreed to extend their Blue Lane entry
permission to Savusavu from 1 April, see
www.fijitimes.com/savusavu-approved-as-port-of-entry-for-foreign-luxury-yach
ts/

The Tropics
It is another quiet weekend with no active cyclones.

WEATHER ZONES
SPCZ=South Pacific Convergence zone.
SPCZ is rather broad and weak, stretching from Coral Sea/Solomons to Fiji/
Samoa with some convergence zones around French Polynesia.
Weak passing trough over New Caledonia on Tuesday 30 March.
Low is expected to form in the Coral sea by sat 3 April and should stay SW
of New Caledonia.
Lows are also expected to form near Austral Islands and south of Pitcairn at
end of the week, travelling off to the east.

Subtropical ridge (STR)
HIGH east of NZ is expected to travel off to the east along 40S.
New High is expected to travel into Tasman Sea from New South Wales on
Wednesday and reach northern NZ for the Easter weekend.

Aussie/Tasman/NZ troughs
Trough over central NZ tonight crossing North Island on Monday/Tuesday,
-stay put.
Low is expected to form in south Tasman Sea on Monday and travel east over
central NZ on Wednesday, followed by a southerly flow on Thursday/Friday.

Panama to Galapagos/Marquesas
Moderate northerly to NE/E winds to Galapagos this week, along with a good
tail current.
Path to take to Marquesas this week is via NORTH of Galapagos.

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