Utah Windriders Association

When they backed down from 30 to 20% chance of rain, I decided I was going. When I got to Evanston it looked like Katrina north of I80 but a little better south. But, when I got to the lake at 1:00, there was the storm from hell bearing down on the lake and it went from light wind and sun to near darkness and total whitecaps in 10 minutes (strangely it didn’t rain). I took a nap and let it pass. Started off a little weak after the storm passed then built in front of the next storm cell. I sailed through 4 of these storm cells with wind speeds pretty variable. Still, it beat the usual rip and schlog. Looking at the Evanston wind readings it is hard to believe that the 7.0 worked but I was underpowered and overpowered about equal. And I got some absolutely warp-speed rides shore to shore. Maybe it was just the nap but I was so mellow I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. It was 67 the whole time I was there, pretty sweet for May 2.

Sounds a lot like what happened today at DC. The wind kicked in a little after 11 and gradually built into the low 20s before backing off quite a bit at around 12:30. And then it started going nuts with sudden direction shifts, gusts that reached into the 30s and lulls down to zero. I got in a very nice 45 min early on, coming in when the wind backed off. John Dubock arrived just as I was finishing up and George a bit later. By the time they got rigged (John 7.0, George 6.5) the monster gusts were coming through, and they very wisely chose not to launch.