Update from Valencia

In baseball, it’s 3 strikes and you’re out!

It is official….this is a record for the number of days at the beginning of the Louis Vuitton Cup without a race.

The bad news is that tomorrow is still the same synoptic situation. Friday things start to change a bit and there is a bit of movement.

The story is this – synoptically, there is very little gradient wind here this week. No fronts, no lows, no isobars, no nothing. There is a very slight Northeast flow over the top of a mild low pressure that is over Algeria, south of Valencia.

So, we are dependent on thermal heating to create a sea breeze. On a clear day, the sun heats the land, it also heats the air above the land. This air rises and circulates back out over the cooler water. This cooler air then sinks where it then flows back over the shore creating wind. The bigger the temperature differential between the cooler water and the warmer land, the stronger the sea breeze.

The problem here is 1) it is spring time and the temperature differential is not that great, as the land is only getting to 22C these days and 2) the little bit of gradient there is, is coming from the Northeast and the upper air circulation of the sea breeze here in Valencia, needs to flow to the East. So we have the two breezes fighting at 5,000 feet and therefore, no circulation.

Maybe it is time to put a call into the Vatican Yacht Club.