Sea Breeze

These figures illustrate the sea breeze phenomenon. Sea breeze is a kind of circulation caused by differences in heating. The heating occurs because of intense solar forcing (sunshine). This circulation typically occurs where the land heats up much more than the surrounding ocean. The air over the heated zones rises and colder air is drawn in from the surrounding area.

In the case of Greater Victoria the heating is most strong inland in a zone running roughly northwest to southeast and in the Highlands area near the southern tip of Saanich Inlet. You can see on the temperature and wind maps below that the wind is generally blowing in from the ocean toward the areas of greatest heating.

In this case the sea breeze lasted a few hours around the time of most intense heating. These plots span about an hour in time.

Temperature across the network.
Wind speed and direction across the network.
Temperature over the Victoria area.
Wind speed and direction over the Victoria area.
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