So, what do you tell competitors when they wish for more wind around here?

Shea Gibson smiled, "Just be patient, it will happen! I think there will be enough wind out there for everybody today."

This is Gibson's seventh year calling weather for Charleston Race Week and his fourth year working with SailFlow as a partner. He's part of the Quantum weather team on site at CRW and his thorough reporting is invaluable for sailors, especially the out-of-towners, as he provides in-depth daily forecasts and discussion about the convoluted current patterns that result from the convergence of three rivers that flow into Charleston Harbor.

"Charleston has a very unique and very diverse wind pattern based on the sea breezes here," Gibson explained. "Any different directions of onshore winds have different properties, such as today the southeast winds being lighter than what you would normally see from a south or southwest sea breeze. Even east-north-east sea breezes tend to have different properties - cooler air versus warmer air coming up from the south."

He suggests out-of-towners reach out to locals who know the sea breezes and how they fill into the harbor along with the currents. "Even some of the wave action in the offshore rings - it all matters, it's all based around wind," he added. We have a three-river system with varying scopes of current that rip through the harbor and all the way out through the jetties. Together with the breeze can make for a difficult and challenging type of racing environment."

For those classes racing in the offshore area today - ORC A, Pursuit Non-Spinnaker, and Pursuit Spinnaker A and B divisions, Gibson thinks they will see along the outer harbor 5-9 knots from the ESE or the SE before it fills in.

"That's the norm especially as sea surface temperatures are down near 70-72 degrees it tends to be a little bit of a stable factor and does help to bring in a little more wind when you are in the 70s. When you are in the 50-60s, that takes some of the wind out of what's going on out there. We may get a couple of extra knots inside the harbor."

Gibson's watching closely for the weather that's coming in on Saturday and what the high-resolution models are showing for storms in the area. He says it looks like there is going to be a warm air sector ahead of it with a lot of potential for storm activity to occur. "We are in the slight risk category which is an elevated category of risk for severe weather which means the possibility is higher than normal - anytime throughout Saturday morning we're currently looking at isolated events and possibly coming severe late morning early afternoon. We're hoping that some of it gets staved off and that it breaks up a bit but there may be another line that tries to march through some time mid-afternoon. It's just going to be very sporadic and we'll have to watch really closely as those higher resolution models give us more data to go by."

He continued, "Rain looks inevitable, some on and off again showers. The winds will be questionable because even with these isolated showers - they are convective in nature and they can cause some winds to spike upwards - anything going over head could cause shifty directions at times - it's a particularly challenging forecast for tomorrow. I think the main flow from the south will hold overall with a few gusty surges."

Gibson will be watching for the severity of the weather and will be in touch with the National Weather Service / Charleston later and will provide an update to the CRW fleet late Friday afternoon, and suggests racers pay attention to the National Weather Service / Charleston website: https://www.weather.gov/chs/

*Gibson learned much of what he knows about weather forecasting from his dad, who was a meteorologist in the Airforce. He carried that into kiteboarding when he got into the sport in 2009, and started a wind report group, used the data to do research on sea breezes. He was scouted by WeatherFlow who brought him on board in 2012 to be its lead for the southeast region. He has previously raced CRW in the non-spinnaker class on a friend's boat and they won. "I don't race enough but I should!" The best part about sailing in Charleston? "The beauty of the harbor and everything around it, the sunsets, the sunrises, all of it - it's gorgeous here!" - Michelle Slade