NW windsurf · Saturday Oct 24 to Wednesday Oct 28, 2026 · auto-updated Sat 10:10 am
Where to sail this week
This analysis was written Saturday 6:30 pm. The ratings, call and hour-by-hour tables have been auto-updated Sat 10:10 am from newer forecasts; where they differ, trust the numbers.
The week's analysis
Saturday, October 17, 2026, 6:30 pm · for Seattle-area windsurfers
Bottom line: a quiet week, no time off. Sunday's Gorge east wind is 22 to 25 mph in the morning, fading from about 11:30; for a 3.75-hour drive it's a few morning hours, short of the weekend bar. Monday brings 15 to 18 mph afternoon westerlies from Stevenson to Mosier; Tuesday and Wednesday light easterlies. The next real chance is a cooler system in the Thursday-Friday window with possible gusty 20 to 25 mph Gorge westerlies. Home water stays light: N 5 to 10 kt on the Sound Sunday and Tuesday afternoons.
How today went
Off Cline Spit the New Dungeness buoy read W 13 to 14 kt until 2 pm and 18 kt after: lighter and later than our W 20 to 25 kt forecast, but a good afternoon. In the Gorge, the westerly peaked before dawn (16 to 19 mph Viento to the Hatch), then fell to 11 to 14; the desert ran 14 to 17 mph against our 19 to 22. Track record: 61 of 77 verified spot-days within one star.
An honest look at this forecast
- Good at: direction (84% right), the big calls (the Monday Oct 5 day off was right; dropping Thursday Oct 15 was right), and anything 0 to 2 days out (85 to 90% within one star).
- Weak at: timing (Saturday built when we said it would ease; Thursday was a morning event; Golden Gardens filled early twice), the top of the scale (most 4-star days came in at 3), and spots without their own forecast (the desert Gorge was 5 mph high today).
- Not trustworthy yet: the grading itself leans on proxies (only 20 of 77 days measured at the spot), and several updates ran on stale, cached forecasts.
The plan to fix it is in docs/SELF_REVIEW_2026-10-17.md: automated inputs that refuse stale data, hourly measurements at the spots, a timing score alongside the stars, a stricter bar for 4 and 5 stars, and per-source skill tracking. Your session logs and iWindsurf screenshots are the most valuable inputs.
Your week, day by day
Multi-day runs worth the RV
Home water: cold and current
Cold: the Sound is about 54°F now and 45 to 48°F from November to March. Wear a 5/4 hooded suit with booties and gloves (Urban Surf's year-round Washington pick) or a drysuit, and assume every swim lasts longer than you expect.
Currents: in the main basin the flood runs south and the ebb runs north. On a north-wind day the flood carries you downwind toward Shilshole and West Point; the ebb runs against the wind, giving steeper chop but making it easier to hold ground. So in a northerly, prefer the ebb; in a southerly, the flood. Currents are strongest off points like West Point. Check NOAA current predictions before you go.
Golden Gardens: stay upwind; Shilshole Marina is directly downwind in a north wind. Carkeek: the wind often sits about 100 yards out and is flukey near the beach, so expect to drag or swim out, and to swim in if it dies. High tide leaves little beach.
West Point: great sensor, poor launch. The point has the strongest current nearby and the beach is a long walk from parking.
Self-rescue: sail with your buddy, carry a phone in a waterproof pouch, tell someone your plan, and practice Marek's controlled drifting (sail in the water to windward, hold the uphaul, nose across the wind) before you need it. Call 911 for Seattle Harbor Patrol or the Coast Guard.
E-bike trailers: the 125 L Starboard and the 145 L Dialer fit a two-wheel SUP or surfboard bike trailer; the 147 L and both longboards are long for city riding. Use two-piece masts (each section is about 2.3 to 2.5 m) and roll the sails. Carkeek's beach is over a footbridge across the railroad tracks, so check how the trailer handles the bridge before a windy day. Golden Gardens has parking and grass next to the beach.
How the call is made
These rules are generated from data/rules/time_off_rules.json; the full logic is in docs/DECISION.md.
Sources: NWS Seattle coastal waters forecast (8:06 pm Friday, the newest reachable); Temira's Saturday-Sunday post; NOAA New Dungeness buoy six-hour averages.
Dashboard: closest first, then farther out
Sunday Oct 4 to Thursday Oct 8. Each band below covers the spots within that drive of north Seattle (ferries included, border waits not). Stars rate the wind only (how they're worked out is at the bottom). Tap a day for every spot in that band, and tap a spot for its numbers and what to bring.
Browse by area instead
How the stars are calculated
Stars come from the forecast wind numbers only, with the same rules for every spot and day.
- Input. The sustained wind range forecast for that spot and day, in mph. NWS and Environment Canada forecasts are in knots and were converted (1 kt is 1.15 mph). Temira's Gorge forecast is already in mph. Gusts are shown but not counted.
- Speed band. Take the midpoint of the range. Under 8 mph is 0 stars, 8 to 11 is 1, 11 to 14 is 2, 14 to 18 is 3, 18 to 23 is 4, 23 to 28 is 5. The same bands drive the "what to bring" kit table: foil or longboard below 14, the 125 L board from 18 up. Sustained 28 mph or more is overpowered and is capped at 4.
- Timing penalty. A window of about 2 hours or less (after 5 pm, or evening only) subtracts 3 stars, because rigging and launching use up most of it. A window of 3 to 4 hours (morning only, or dawn to mid-morning) subtracts 1. Afternoon, all-day or split windows subtract nothing.
- Confidence penalty. Subtract 1 star when the source itself states low confidence. This week that is NWS Pendleton's roughly 30% confidence in Monday's Cascade gap-wind speeds (Vantage, Desert Aire, Lake Wenatchee, Rimrock, Lake Cle Elum).
- Direction cap. The forecast direction must be within 45° of a good direction listed for that spot (from nw-windtalk and the spot guides). If it is 45° or more away, the spot is capped at 1 star. Spots with no documented direction skip this step.
- Floor and gaps. Stars never go below 0. Days beyond a forecast's range (British Columbia Wednesday and Thursday) show a dash, not a guess.
- Distance bands. Spots are grouped by drive time from north Seattle: under 30 minutes, 30 minutes to 2½ hours, 2½ to 4 hours, and over 4 hours. A band's stars for a day equal its best spot that day. Ties go to the spot with the right wind direction, then to a sourced rather than estimated forecast, then to the shorter drive. "Browse by area" groups the same ratings by region instead.
Discipline fit and gear. A spot-day "fits" a discipline from the same midpoint wind, as long as the direction is not capped and the window is not under 2 hours: longboard from 6 to 14 mph, foil from 8 to 18 mph, planing from 14 mph up. These come from windtalk reports (City League longboards racing in 3 to 18 mph, first foil flights in 8 to 10 kt, smooth foil flights at 13 to 17 mph, fin boards planing from the mid teens) and your gear's limits. Gear picks come from the "Your quiver" table at your weight.
Not included: water temperature, tides, currents, swell, launch quality, crowds and the drive itself.
Where the numbers come from: each spot's wind range comes from the forecast named in its "Basis" line: NWS marine forecasts and forecast discussions, Environment Canada marine forecasts, or Temira's Gorge forecast. Turning a zone forecast into one spot's local wind took judgment, and speeds marked "estimate" (Roads End) are my own inference from coast-wide forecasts. All the inputs, the formula and the results are saved with source ids in the database that goes with this page.
One scale everywhere. The Spots grid, this dashboard and the analysis all use these stars. My earlier 0 to 4 judgment ratings are kept in the database for comparison; for this forecast they agree with the stars within one step on 319 of the 320 spot-days that have a forecast.
Next gear purchase
Sail size calculator
For any rider. Set your weight and the steady wind, and it suggests a sail for each type of board. It blends this project's gear table, scaled to your weight, with a reference quiver chart, and shows both so you can see where they agree.
Your quiver: what to bring
Sized for your boards and your 10 to 3.7 m sails. Tap any day on the grid to see the pick for that spot and forecast. Set your weight in the box below. Fin-board sails shift about 1 m2 per 22 lb (a sail maker's rule of thumb), foil sails about half that; the bands come from windtalk session reports, including a 190 lb sailor fully powered on a 4.7 at 26 mph average.
Live wind
This page can't fetch outside data, so it shows the NOAA readings captured at the last refresh (from NOAA's six-hour averages), plus whatever you add from iWindsurf below.
| Station | Reading | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| West Point, Seattle | N 12 kt2 to 8 pm average, Sunday; N 11 kt 8 am to 2 pm | A steady northerly all day, stronger than the forecast's 5 to 10 kt: Golden Gardens was sailable. |
Your iWindsurf readings
Paste what Claude in Chrome read from iWindsurf, or add screenshots of sensor graphs or iW-WRF tables. Claude pulls out each reading, saves it here for all your devices, and flags spots that are on.
No readings saved yet.
Puget Sound, Strait and coast
- West PointGolden Gardens and Carkeek: N to NW 15+ kt means go.
- Port TownsendAdmiralty Inlet push for Jetty Island; ferries can block it by day.
- TacomaFirst place a southerly shows up before it reaches Renton and the lake.
- BremertonCompare pressure with the coast for the Purdy gradient.
- Hansville buoyPoint No Point area, for Double Bluff and Golden Gardens.
- Westport and Grays Harbor buoyWesthaven and Damon Point.
- Padilla BayBay View.
- NWS Medford coastal forecastFloras Lake (Florence to Cape Blanco).
- Port AngelesCrescent Beach and the Strait. Smith Island and the New Dungeness buoy were offline when checked.
- All NOAA Northwest stationsFree, updates every 6 to 10 minutes.
Columbia Gorge
- Temira's Gorge wind forecastDaily, spot by spot, written to match the iWindsurf sensors.
- Hood River weather chatroomReal-time reports from people on the water.
- The Dalles airportFree NWS observations with a 24-hour wind history.
- The Dalles Dam flow and John Day Dam flowCurrent and swell size; Stevenson to Doug's uses The Dalles, Avery to Rufus uses John Day.
- Alan's Sauvie Island sensorPortland-area northerlies.
Lake Washington, east side and all regions
- iWindsurf / iKitesurfPaid, but it has the sensors locals quote: 520 Bridge, SSP, Vantage, Ellensburg, Swell, Rufus, Arlington. Also the iW-WRF model.
- Windy multimodel, Lake WashingtonECMWF vs HRRR side by side. Add 1 to 3 mph to ECMWF for north wind at SSP.
- Ellensburg airportThe upwind check for Vantage, since the Vantage sensor sits in a wind shadow.
- nw-windtalk#WindAlert and #JoinMeToday posts are often the fastest live report.
Pick a day
Tap a day to highlight it in the grid. A warm ridge holds all week. The Gorge is the busy place: east wind Sunday morning, a solid westerly Monday that eases through Wednesday, then east wind again Thursday. Monday also brings gap winds to Vantage and a westerly to the Strait.
Every spot, every day
Colors and the small number show stars, the same 0 to 5 scale as the dashboard. Arrows point the way the wind blows. Speeds are the expected afternoon range in mph. Tap a spot name for its full profile, starting with what nw-windtalk members say, or a square for that day's wind.
Reading the Gorge sensors
From Temira at The Gorge Is My Gym: the sensors don't agree, so translate before you rig.
- The Hatch fires when Portland is cloudy and Hood River is sunny. A clear Portland sky often means an afternoon die-off, so head east to Lyle, Rowena or Doug's.
- Arlington fires when it is cloudy, rainy and cool west of The Dalles, mostly in spring and fall.
- Rufus loses its swell above about 325,000 cfs of river flow; check John Day Dam.
- Water right now: Columbia about 66°F, Puget Sound and the coast about 58°F, the Strait about 51°F.
- Passes: Discover Pass ($45 a year or about $10 to $11.50 a day) for the Hatch, Doug's and Maryhill; Oregon State Parks for Rooster Rock, Viento and Rowena; $80 CGW2 pass for Swell City; Port of Hood River pass or hourly parking on the waterfront.
Road trips and winter escapes
Spots outside the 5-day forecast. "WT" means windtalk members have posted trip reports. Tap one for the group's notes, season, launch, camping (including free options) and how far it is.
Sailing log
Your sessions, newest first, built from your notes and watch files.
Prediction accuracy
Every past forecast checked against what actually happened: stations, same-day reports and your own sessions. Updated each time the dashboard is updated. Method: docs/VERIFICATION.md.