Oregon coast viz predictors

[climbingsolo]

We dove the Westport Jetty yesterday. We entered at high slack to find less than desirable dirty water 5-6 ft viz. from the surface down to 30 ft. Followed by patience testing ebbing current that was surprisingly stout. But after 1 hour of being in the water and suffering through some crummy warm-up dives, the current ceased all together and the viz miraculously increased to 8-10ft on surface and 15'+ at 30ft.
All in all came back with a handful of BR toads and sighted a nice Ling for future tacos.

[quattroluvr]

for Columbia-carping vis status, finally found a Columbia river turbidity measure, near Bonneville dam aka "columbia river mile 145" for viz scouting. http://columbia.loboviz.com/loboviz/ just set the date range to one day/current day. You can even get at seasonality time series data. It rarely gets below 1.5 and often soars to pea soup levels, but 1.5 can be workable barely, and in side lake-impoundments, it can settle out and be much better than in the river proper.

[quattroluvr]

recent winter clear-skies day prompted me to look at Terrafin sat images.... N. Oregon coast pretty 'green' at 3-6 ft ish est vis a few days ago, while the Columbia plume is firmly in it's winter pattern, meaning 100% of the muddy water is pushed north towards Westport.. Oh yeah, and today's swell was a measly 21.5 ft high, piece o' cake yak'ing out in that! hahahaha.