Saturday
Weather
Winds will be force 5-6 SSW’ly, bringing relatively warm air but also an alternating sequence of bright/sunny intervals and occasional heavy showers. Those showers will be most intense around lunchtime and early afternoon, when I will be surprised if they don’t also produce some thunder and lightning (and maybe even some hail). The most likely rainfall total will be about 10mm for the day (possibly as much as 15mm). Daytime max temps will be about 16°C. Overnight min temps will be about 12°C.
Surf and the Water
A great day for experienced windsurfers and wave-surfers, those waves being about 10 feet and 8 foot (super clean all day). Tides will be high and very splashy at 6:50am and 7:10pm (9.8m and 10m respectively). Combined with the wind and the swell, there will obviously be some very messy sections of the west coast road, and it might also be messy on one or two corners of the east coast road.
Sunday
Weather
It’s very hard to find any differences between Saturday and Sunday. Winds will remain force 5-6 SSW’ly and the showers will continue to come and go, without losing much (if any) of their intensity. One small difference, although I’m really not too confident about this one, is that lunchtime and early afternoon actually look like the best time to avoid showers on this occasion, so maybe that will be the best time to go for an invigorating autumnal walk in a suitably sheltered area such as Pleinmont. Temperatures peaking at 15-16°C by day, then bottoming out at 11-12°C overnight.
Surf and the Water
The waves will hold around 6 feet and clean, offering shapely ramps for both surfers and wind-surfers alike. Mega-splashy high tides will be an issue again, with highs of about 10m at both 6:30am and 6:50pm (if you are scratching your head at why the highs are earlier than on Saturday then this is just an illusion created by the clock-change… which hopefully you will not have forgotten to do).
Next Week
Weather
Apologies for the lack of daily detail, but on this occasion I can’t even split the week into two distinct halves. The theme of very strong winds and heavy showers will be there throughout, so it would be simpler to describe the week as a whole and just highlight the moment that look particularly troublesome… Wind directions will alternate between SSW’ly and WSW’ly on an almost daily basis, as one deep low pressure system after another ploughs across Britain en-route from the Labrador Sea to Scandinavia. It currently looks as though the wind strength will be fresh force 5 strong force 6 through most of Monday and Tuesday, stepping up to force gale force 8 through Wednesday, possibly even touching severe gale force 9 overnight and at times on Thursday morning, before holding around strong force 6 to 7 through Friday. So Wednesday night currently looks likely to be the most damaging in terms of wind and it also looks likely to be one of the wettest moments, with the potential to catch about 20mm of rain, as opposed to the 10mm which is most likely every other day.
Surf and the Water
As the wind alternates between cross-shore and offshore, there will be times when the surf conditions are epic for surfers, and even more times when they will be epic windsurfers can. Waves will shrink a little through Monday and Tuesday, dropping from roughly 6 feet on Monday morning down to roughly 3 feet on Wednesday afternoon. Then, through the second half of the week, it’s all going to get pretty massive again, steadily cranking up to 5 or 6 feet by sunset Wednesday, then up to about 12 feet by dawn Thursday and remaining similarly enormous through the rest of the week. Tides will be high in the mornings and evenings, mercifully shrinking from roughly 10m Monday morning to roughly 7.5m Friday evening.
The next forecast update will be on Monday evening…
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