WAVE CALENDAR |
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| This web page lists the days when wave
was working in or around Wenatchee in the spring of
2004. When the date window is colored [[[[]]]]], then there was wave. |
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| If the date number is underlined, that
means that there is a link to more comments about
that day - - whether there was a wave or not. Often there are also pictures or diagrams to go along with the comments. Click on the date to get more information about that day. |
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| MARCH | APRIL |
Tuesday 27 April. Cold front passage has been announced to take place some time this day. At seven in the morning lenticular clouds were stretching all across Wenatchee Valley.
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The most prominent ones were those generated by the Entiat Ridge (the so called, "Rocky Reach Dam Wave").
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This photo is from Wenatchee looking north over Fancher Heights at seven a.m.
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And this is half an hour later... long enough to get a tow to it... The winds aloft were not very favorable for a good wave, though. While lined up within twenty degrees from the west (good), the wind velocity was not picking up with altitude as it should. At six thousand wind was 20 kts, but at twenty five thousand it was still only 40 kts.
Saturday 24 April. Following yesterday when wave developed during frontal passage, two graceful lenticulars appeared at sunrise on Saturday.
One above Jumpoff - a true UFO. (A view south, from Eastmont High School in East Wenatchee.)
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and another above Twin Peaks.
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The view is from the same location, looking west. According to the satellite soundings, winds were picking up from 7000' (20 knots) on up to 35000' (90 knots), from north-north west. Wonder if anyone attemted getting in the wave this day.
Sunday 18 April. A long wave cloud developed in the evening around six o'clock along Mission and Jumpoff. During the day the cumulus clouds were everywhere, and those in the Wenatchee area were overdeveloping like the previous day.
Saturday 17 April. No wave. Following gorgeous Friday with towering cumulus stretching far east over Columbia Basin, this day was almost its carbon copy. In late afternoon some of the clouds overdeveloped. Fresh snow dumped on Mission Ridge. Laviniu went cross-country north of Mansfield almost to Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River. On the way back he could not climb over Badger Mountain and landed out at Waterville. Tim Holliday aerotowed him back. Laviniu took the prize of being the first club member to land out this season!
Wednesday 14 April. A passing front in the morning kicked off a broad wave spanning from Twin Peaks to over Jumpoff. Winds aloft were weak, however. According to the forecast they were ranging from 20 to 25 knots between 5 to 15 thousand feet, from the southwest. Not strong enough, and not increasing with altitude.
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This lenticular developed over Twin Peaks. View due west.
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Here is the leading edge of the long lenticular. Note the rotor cloud in the upper right. Mission Ridge ski area is in the lower left. Both photos were taken at 7 am. View towards southwest.
During the day clouds billowed and looked menacingly dark; somewhere in the mountains it actually rained, and in Wenatchee sprinkled a little. However, the wave was out there working among the multiple layers.
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In the evening (around 7:30 pm) it looked like this. View to the south towards Jumpoff and Mission.
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Here is an enlargement of the lower left area of the previous picture. Winds were still pretty mild, but this time were gradually picking up to 25000' (where they were still only 36 kts according to a satellite sounding).
Sunday 11 April. The sky was clear. Surface winds from the southeast. Don't know where anyone went, my radio quit upon take-off. After having turned Waterville, I tried for Mission. After getting too low on the upwind (SE) slopes of Jumpoff, and after experiencing a heavy downwash on Saturday on the Jumpoff NW slopes, I decided to explore the area downwind of Jumpoff for any possibility of a wave. And indeed, there was one such area. See the picture.
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The blue line indicates the area of Jumpoff wave (?). I arrived there at 3600' and eventually climbed to 4700' in what appeared like a low level wave... or was it just wishfull thinking? Probably a combination of ridge lift and some wave contribution.... An item of interest was the airport atop Wenatchee Heights, called Hoverhawk (blue dot in the picture).
Wave campers were getting desperate here for a wave which has been eluding us for almost two weeks now! [Webmaster].
Saturday 10 April. The sky was clear. Surface winds from the south reversed at around 4000' to northwesterly, but remained light in the morning, still less than 10 knots at 10,000'. Good thermal soaring to 11,500' was predicted. It turned out no one got above 9,000'. Four gliders got cross-country to Waterville.
Wednesday 7 April. While during the previous two days the air was too sluggish to produce anything wave-wise, Wednesday morning dawned to a promise of a wave day.
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Distinct cloud rows formed to the north of Wenatchee at 7 am.
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By 7:20 am a nice lenticular developed in the "usual" place between Badger Mountain and Rocky Reach Dam. But... as the day went by, thermals developed and broke up the laminar flow. However, wind continued and one could have benefited from additional wave lift.
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By the evening, northwest winds whipped up a controlled forest burn seemingly out of control. View is towards Mission Ridge. Over the next several days smoke from the fire filled Wenatchee Valley for miles around, as the air became again still and temperature inversion developed.
Sunday 4 April. Even at the top of Mission Ridge the air was dead still. Thermals worked though, and a few ships went up. The farthest anyone got was Jim Simmons in Nimbus 3 flying 100 miles to Mansfield and back, and then up over the ski area; all in the blue. The only cu-marked thermals were past Ephrata and north of Grand Coullee. Wave was taking a vacation.
Saturday 3 April. Following a lull lasting the previous three days, finally some wind came back. However, the wind was insignificant until about 15,000'... and so unless one took a tow that high, there seemed to be no way to get to them.
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Teaser waves. Mission Ridge, 12:30 pm. Forty five minutes later they looked like this:
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Those who came to soar, enjoyed floating low near the airport.
Tuesday 30 March. Overcast, and by 3 pm a passing front generated massive lenticulars over the valley for about one and a half hours.
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View SW towards Mission Ridge.
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View NW towards Burch Mountain.
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View north from downtown Wenatchee towards Burch (on L) and Badger (on R).
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View west from downtown towards Twin Peaks on right. Note the rotor cloud to the right of the lamp post which was kicked off by Twin Peaks. The lenticular is actually farther west than Twin Peaks, and was likely generated by the range ahead of it.
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Seen from the same spot, only to the southeast, was a mean lenticular with heavy snow-laden inverted puffs hanging down from it (called mammatus clouds, similar to those sometimes undulating under thunderstorms).
Monday 29 March. Clear. Not a stir.
Sunday 28 March. No wave. Six gliders up to 6500'.
Saturday 27 March. The early morning peak out of the window revealed blue skies and a few puffy clouds in the west. No obvious sign that there might be a wave out there. And yet... Mission Ridge ski area recorded telephone message revealed that at 8 am the winds at the top of the mountain were 37 mph...[Ed.: ...added Mission Ridge website in our "weather" resources list]
At the same time, the winds at Pangborn were 22 knots gusting to 28, from the west.
Around noon the winds were quite gusty at Pangborn, so much that the Wave Camp out-of-town visitors decided not to rig their gliders. However, Arnie in the Russia, Kurt in the Lark, and Laviniu in his Cobra towed up between one and two o'clock. Arnie and Kurt got to the base of the rotors at 7,500', but found no way into the wave.
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Here is Arnie's barogram trace.
Laviniu persevered and was rewarded... He managed to climb to 17,600' ! (His personal record.)
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Laviniu released at The Pocket at 4100'. After two circling climbs (the first to 5,800' and the second to 7,500' in the area between The Pocket and Lookot), Laviniu found the entry into the wave at 8,300', just about one mile west of the Badger Mountain Lookout.
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The best lift on the west side of Columbia about four miles west of Badger, about three miles southwest of Orondo.
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Here is the Barogram from Laviniu's flight. The scale on the right is in thousands of feet. Laviniu spent over an hour and a half above 14,000", with the high point at 17,600'. He tried to open the Wave Window, but no one was talking back to him... his battery was dead.
In the evening, around six o'clock, one long wave cloud formed over the ridge east of Pangborn.
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Friday 26 March. All is clean! Thursday rain washed away the grey skies and dirt. Mission Ridge and surrounding hills received five inches of fresh powder snow, making them sparkle from 2,500' on up. Friday morning the ski area reported winds at the top of 16 mph, good. And indeed, two rotor bands paralleling Mission Ridge churned, with bright sunshine filtered in-between them. The primary rotor stretched from Twin Peaks to Jumpoff Lookout, the secondary one extending from over downtown Wenatchee to Jumpoff TV tower. And just south of there, still over Jumpoff, two nice rotors with lenticulars developed at 7:30 am. See the photo (zoomed-in). The wind is coming from the right, and the view is towards south-south east..
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The wave has been then developing nicely. Two hours later, at 9:30 am, it looked like in the picture below:
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This view is towards the south, in a much wider-angle view than the 7:30 am picture. The rotors were rather low, at about 6000', and the lenticular formed this time much higher.
By 10 am the wave action was not as pronounced as the wind shifted over 50° with altitude (lower winds blew from the southwest, while higher ones from the south). Eventually the wave disappeared. Later in the day there were great cumulous thermal streets.
Just some food for thought: With wave forming often in the morning and then receding, perhaps one should consider being prepared and ready to tow up at sunrise... Today's wave lasted for good four hours.... but only until 10 am.
7 pm update, the same day. Today's wave lasted probably the whole day, but it was obscured in the overcast and raggedy-shaped rotors. In the evening when the thermals died, a very nice wave formed over the southwest skies. Here seen taken in the dark using the camera's infrared function.
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Wednesday 24 March. In the morning there was solid overcast with dark bands of uplifted sections at 8000' about two miles downwind from Mission Ridge, paralleling the ridge. Winds at altitude from SW. Surface wind at Pangborn in the opposite direction, 070° at 6 kts, 7°C. By eleven the sky was clear and nice cu's covered the sky until the late afternoon. Then the sky got dark again, and the next day it dumped.
Tuesday 23 March. Two wave bands have been developing over Chelan in the morning (7 am photo). The view is to the north from Wenatchee over Fancher Heights. At the same time a small rotor cloud churned over the Jumpoff ridge lookout.
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