Yesterday off the coast of Northern/Central California a classic coastal jet was observed on the Quickscat sea winds satellite. Here’s a composite image showing the jet (the gale-force winds indicated by the red and black flags).

The factors that influence coastal jet formation are numerous and somewhat complicated. However, the California coastal jet can generally be described as the interaction of the semi-permanent east Pacific high pressure system and the temperature-driven western US low-pressure system. For a good introduction to coastal jet formation, you can view “this”:1 web-based mini-course on the MetEd site (registration required, but free).

[1(MetEd Coastal Jet Mini-Course)]https://www.meted.ucar.edu/loginForm.php?urlPath=mesoprim/coastaljets#

If you are a fan of 3D programs, including Google Earth and Google SketchUp, you know how frustrating it can be to navigate using a computer mouse. Fortunately, a company called “3DConnexion”:1 (now owned by Logitech) makes an affordable six degrees-of-freedom controller called the SpaceNavigator — Amazon currently has it listed for about “56 bucks”:2.

I’ve been using it for about a month now and find it to be far, far superior to the mouse. It’s a bit complicated to explain how it works, so a demo is in order. A couple minutes of searching on YouTube comes up with a bunch of SpaceNavigator/Google Earth demos. Here’s one of the better ones…

And here’s a video of how the device works…

[2(SpaceNavigator on Amazon)]http://www.amazon.com/3Dconnexion-SpaceNavigator-3D-Navigation-3DX-700029/dp/B000LB41BM/
[1(3DConnexion homepage)]http://www.3dconnexion.com/

If you want to know how they remotely measure sea winds, “here”:1 is a link to a good mini course on it from the “MetEd”:2 site. You have to register, but it is free.

[1(Sea Winds Course Page)]http://www.meted.ucar.edu/npoess/ocean_winds/

[2(MetEd Homepage)]http://www.meted.ucar.edu/

Remnants of former hurricane Cosme are going to pass close to Hawaii later in the week. It won’t be up to much, so at worst probably just some winds and rain. Here’s the forecast track from the hawaii.edu “storm page”:1.

[1(Hawaii.edu storm page)]http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/

It actually rained in The City today (San Francisco, CA)… not very much just 0.02″. It did, however, set a record for today, since it has never rained in recorded weather history on July 18th.

From today’s area forecast discussion:

bq.. IT HAS BEEN A RECORD SETTING MORNING. DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO HAS HAD 0.02 INCHES OF RAIN THIS MORNING…WHICH IS A RECORD FOR THIS DATE. THE PREVIOUS RECORD FOR DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO WAS…ZERO! RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT FOR DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO FOR MORE THAN 150 YEARS! LIGHT TO MODERATE RAIN HAS FALLEN LAST NIGHT AND THIS MORNING ACROSS MOST OF THE BAY AREA NORTH OF SAN JOSE. RAINFALL TOTALS HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 0.2 OF AN INCH IN PLACES OF THE NORTH BAY…WITH 0.1 INCHES OR LESS ACROSS THE BAY AREA…AND EVEN UP TO 0.02 INCHES IN LA HONDA AND BEN LOMOND.

p.. Here’s the doppler radar image showing the system a little later in the day.

And the 1 KM visible satellite image.