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Thought you already had enough to look at when deciding what the wind is going to do today? With the forecast table, real time wind graph, weather, trees, clouds, birds! I don't think anyone should use birds, but who knows some of us might. Well now we have one more thing to review, the human forecast. Mike Godsey the iKitesurf meteorologist for our Southern California region has begun doing his daily briefing. Mike offers a technical write up for the main kite beaches ranging from Pismo Beach down to San Diego, most importantly Belmont Shore of Long Beach. He will usually do an early morning forecast with midday update for these locations. Mike has a pretty good handle on our wind, but I think with him covering such a large area and not being on site the numbers can be a bit off. Not knocking anything that he does as he has a way better understanding of what's actually happening out there, but having "boots on the ground" at your wind location can give you a better call for wind. It's why the Belmont web cam was setup so people could see if the numbers on iKite were giving an accurate representation what was happening on the beach, and why I'm doing this blog. Which if you didn't know about the web cam I'll add the link below, but it's just another thing you'll stare at. With these new bits of information it seems like we are overloading ourselves with what to look for. How can you keep track of all of this?? Well, don't fret it's just a part of the game. Wind is one fickle weather phenomenon to predict especially for strength and time in which it'll happen. The best way to start understanding this sport and the conditions is to give yourself a broad overview of each day, but with the best information you can find. I've spent years looking at different models, graphs, human write ups, weather apps, and just being there to put together what works best for me. To help all of you out, I started this blog to give you the information that took myself and other kiters years to develop. I want these write ups to help guide you in forming your own way of forecasting. Use my posts for your daily information, but also explore other outlets. Play around in iKitesurf or other wind apps to see what forecast you'll find. Some of you may have friends in other windsport worlds that can offer their tricks that can be applied to kiteboarding. If you kite in Belmont long enough you may/probably will get more accurate than Mike or myself! Ok, with all that out of the way, let me give you my take on what's going to happen out there today. Currently we have partly cloudy skies with the wind blowing off shore from the North/Northwest at 2MPH. Our WF-WRF model is showing quite the interesting bump around 5:00 PM with winds shooting suddenly up to 20 MPH from the West/Southwest. Our friend Mike is calling for weak mid teens in the late afternoon from the West/Southwest. I'm guessing we are going to see something between the two of these forecast. I'm going with Mike on the strength and iKitesurf on the jump. I don't think it'll be as aggressive as the WF-WRF is calling for, but will bounce up then down late afternoon. Foil folks, as always, can see a chance of riding today, but probably in the late afternoon. Twin tippers could see a light breeze in that same time frame, but bring your big kites and boards. Happy kiting everyone! Belmont Web Cam: http://scka.scka.org/weather/  
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