I tried to do a little analysis of the wind conditions on the day of the accident.
This link (
http://w9if.net/cgi-bin/torreywx/wxhr.pl?dur=72 ) shows a 72 hour history of the wind conditioned measured on or near the Gliderport. I took a snapshot of it from 6am to 6pm during the time of the accident:
Attachment:
torrey_crash_wind_direction.png [ 5.93 KiB | Viewed 67944 times ]
The plot shows two spikes in the wind direction just after noon on the day of the accident.
With regard to calibrating the time of the spikes, there are about 24 pixels per division covering 2 hours (from 12 to 2, for example). So each pixel is about 5 (120/24) minutes wide. That means the two spikes happened at around 12:05 and 12:15. That is pretty close to the time of the accident (postings say that the accident was "reported" at 12:30).
WIth regard calibrating the wind direction, there are about 13 pixels per division covering 50 degrees (from 300 to 350, for example). So each pixel is about 3.85 (50/13) degrees tall. The spikes are about 4 pixels tall, so that would be about 15.4 degrees above 300 for an estimated direction of about 315 degrees. That's exactly 45 degrees from due west.
So I drew a 45 degree line from the front of the westward protruding cliff across the area of the accident to show an approximate wind shadow / wind rotor area on the map (from Google):
Attachment:
torrey_cliff_crash_area_lines.png [ 988.34 KiB | Viewed 68062 times ]
From the data available, I suspect that a pilot flying low in that area at that time might experience fairly severe turbulence from the cliff and from the tall palm trees on that property. I hope this analysis will be considered by anyone investigating this accident and by anyone flying that area of the ridge during northwest wind conditions.