Guernsey Weather Fox

Thursday

Weather

An old decaying weather front, will introduce cool moist air to the Channel around breakfast time. However, because we have had high pressure over us all week, there is a lot of warm dry air through the depth of the atmosphere. Being denser, the cold moist air will slide underneath the all that warm dry air. What this means is that aeroplanes won’t have to fly very high to find the sunshine, but here on the surface, we will be covered by a big grey blanket of cloud. No big deal though, it won’t last for ever, just until about 3 or 4pm, before the force 3-4 NE’ly wind has blown it all into Brittany. Thereafter, it’s going to be a gorgeous sunny evening followed by sparkling starry night. The daytime max will be about a degree lower than today (about 18°C), then the overnight min will be about 3 degrees lower (a refreshing 12°C).

Surf and the Water

Gone is the hope for some reasonable waves from ex-hurricane Henri. Maybe some 1 foot peelers will be on the cards for kids and long-boarders, but it’s really going to be all about the evening swim; the smoothest spots being along the south coast and in a few cosy west-coast nooks. High water will be about 8.9m at 9:50am, low water will be about 1.6m at 4:10pm.

Friday

Weather

There could be a little bubbly cloud to cast a shadow or two, especially around late morning and lunchtime. Otherwise, we are simply looking at a fine and dry day with a continuation of that force 3-4 NE’ly breeze. The temperature should pick up to an island max of about 19-20°C in areas to the south and southwest of the airport. Then the overnight temperature will not fall quite as low as on Thursday night, this time bottoming out at around 13-14°C.

Surf and the Water

Once again, the west-coast surf could have some rideable ripples for very small people, but the main events will be smooth-water sports like swimming paddle-boarding and coasteering (best of all along the south coast again). High water will be around 8.5m at 10:20am, low water will be around 2m at 4:40pm.

The Weekend

Very little change from Friday; the odd cloudier moment but clear skies for the vast majority of the weekend. The breeze still just a light to moderate NE’ly, bringing a feed of comfortable air with unremarkable temperatures (19-20°C for the daily maxima).

Surf and the Water

The surf will most likely be flat on Saturday, but it might just pick up to a longboardable 1-2 feet by the close of play Sunday. The tides will be high in the late mornings (great for some south-coast swimming) and low in the late afternoons (great for some south-coast sand castles).

Next Week

For over a month, the long range forecast-models have consistently said that the latter part of August would probably be fine and dry. Of course this was enough for the Daily Express to recycle the old ‘Killer Heatwave’ article. But now that we have finally shaken off the rotten weather of the first 2/3 of the month, it has become clear that this final snippet of decent summer sunshine will not be any hotter than average. The reason for this being that we aren’t going to get rid of the NE’ly wind until we are at least the first weekend of September. Sometimes this wind will be as light as force 2-3, sometimes as strong as force 5, but either way it will be bringing relatively cool Scandinavian air to the islands, rather than the hot air which has been famously building up around the Mediterranean.

Surf and the Water

Very small tides all week, with just a hint of high water in the early afternoons. As for the surf, well, looking way out west for Tropical Storm/Hurricane activity is the only real hope we have at the moment, and it turns out that some mid-Atlantic development might well deliver the goods towards the end of the week. It’s early days and the forecast is therefore very uncertain, but it looks quite possible that the near-flatness might be replaced by a clean 2-4 foot swell though the first weekend of September. Watch this space.