Good morning everyone!
Hopefully you had an awesome gorge weekend? Are you sore? Yes? Good!
Gorge westerlies continue today. Winds were in the low teens early this morning with an .07 gradient. Well see 16-19 until mid-afternoon, when a cold front approaches Portland. Timing is everything with fronts, but I think we’ll see 22-26 this afternoon. Stevenson usually gets the best pre-frontal wind, but we’ll see 22-26, maybe a bit stronger, as far out as Arlington by evening. Models actually suggest 28-32 at Arlington very late in the day today, but I'm not going along with that. If it happens, it's going to be short-lived. Same thing goes for the Corridor: when the windspeeds jump up this afternoon, get on it. 90 minutes to two hours is the usual duration of these prefrontal wind blasts.
Honestly, I think you should save your arms for tomorrow. It would just be easier that way.That cold front sweeps across the Gorge tonight, setting up a thirty-plus Tuesday. Everything west of the cloudline (I have no idea where that will be) gets 17-20 tomorrow. Arlington is the big-swell call, with winds at 30+ from mid-morning onward. If you want The Wall, remember that the John Day dam is dumping water. The current is super strong, making it choppy, and anyway, it’s going to be gusty (although I might change my mind on the gusty call after looking at models tonight). Go east and go big on Tuesday.
At this point, it looks like we’ll have light winds here Wednesday, but very strong wind on the coast. We're talking 30+ at Florence and 25ish on the north coast.
Mountain bikers, there’s a tack alert issued for post Canyon. It’s in great shape, so head out for an epic ride today.
Finally, the whitewater numbers: The White Salmon’s at 5.46 feet, the Little White’s at 856 cfs, The Wind River’s at 986 cfs and the Hood River’s at 5.68 feet.
Oh... one more thing. I was backcountry skiing on Hood yesterday around 9000 feet, and the snow is in fantastic shape.
So, whatever you do today, have an awesome day!