US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

This Sunday (June 19) is the regular "Sunday Funday" at the Dockweiler hang gliding site.

The wind conditions are not looking very good. Here is the forecast discussion by the NWS:

Onshore flow will weaken through the weekend as the high pressure
system over South Texas expands and builds westward into New
Mexico through Saturday. 500 mb heights rise and 1000-500 mb
thickness values climb through the end of the week as onshore
pressure gradients weaken. The marine layer depth will thin
progressively into Saturday. The best chance of marine layer
stratus clouds will occur through tonight, then it will become
hard-pressed to get any low cloud formation. Temperatures have
been nudged slightly higher for Friday and Saturday as model
solutions are warming the air mass slightly in the lower levels
of the atmosphere.

I was planning on being there Sunday, but if it is still not looking good as Sunday gets closer I may change my mind and stay home. It is Father's Day so that is another factor in my decision.

If I do go there I will plan on flying the Windsports Condor because of the light wind conditions.

Any others watching the Dockweiler forecast who might be planning on being there Sunday?

Frank Colver

I just checked the National Weather Service forecast for Dockweiler and it's showing west at 5 from 11am through 1pm, and increasing to 10 from 2pm to sunset. That looks plenty good for me.

By the way, Saturday looks even better. It's straight west from 5am to midnight ramping from 3 to 10 to 13 to 15 throughout the day. I might come up and stay over for both days.

As of Friday the wind forecast is looking better for Sunday. I'll plan on being out there.

Frank

The forecast does change considerably as the days get closer.

Here's the forecast that I just got a few minutes ago:



The green and blue lines are the predicted speed and direction. The red line (top plot) shows the speed as corrected for direction (cosine of deviation from west). When the wind is straight west, it pretty much duplicates the green wind speed plot. When the direction is not straight west, the top (red) plot suffers. You can see that on June 21st which shows a mild (5mph) wind in the green plot. But since it's coming from the south, the top (red) plot shows zero. So the red plot gives a quick glance at how much of a westerly component will be available to ... soar.

Neil Larson: Reflections of a hang gliding pioneer
June 23, 2016 by Brian Hughes
http://www.crestviewbulletin.com/lifestyle/20160623/reflections-of-hang-gliding-pioneer

Thanks Rick for the post about Neil.