Thread: Cold Fronts
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Old 01-22-2006, 09:44 PM
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There was a recent tragedy involving a kiteboarder lost at sea after a sudden violent cold front generated wind direction change on January 21. 2006 in Bridgeport, CT. Please review and consider the above article and build upon the ideas contained therein, we owe it to ourselves and our families to try to anticipate sudden violent weather changes. Some of the following images are related to paragraph 4 of the above article.

In the sad accident, the rider had just dropped his kite at the beach at Bridgeport, CT.

Click for windgraph image

Note the violent but classic 90 degree wind direction change that accompanies the frontal boundary that starts at around 4 pm. The rider may have been swept out to sea at around 5 pm. More about this tragic accident here

Looking upweather or towards the west northwest you can see the boundary pass and spike winds earlier in the day from ikitesurf.com windgraphs;


Croton, NY at 3 pm


Seneca, NY at 10 am


Crystal Beach, ON at 7:30 am

Often the passage of cold fronts and influence on winds can be anticipate by checking out realtime wind reports, color radar and satellite images upweather. SOMETIMES there may be weather hazard warnings on NWS reports although not always.

There likely were forecasts for the arrival of the cold front, temperature drops and perhaps wind change.

Something similar to this claimed the life of a snowkiteboarder in Alberta, more at: http://fksa.org/viewtopic.php?t=405

and almost injured some riders in SW Florida, more at:
http://fksa.org/viewtopic.php?t=477

Weather planning and monitoring are just as important in kiteboarding as they are in flying. We need to look into this before each sesson and to monitor conditions continuously. IF a violent frontal boundary appears to be inbound (they can stall, speed up and dissapate), it would be best NOT to have a kite up when it arrives.
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