Cold air inversion, 3/11

[andy]

So there we were looking over the edge of eliminator like some homesick Eskimos, but what to are amazement a bird climbing in the ever growing grey in the sky.
Meeting at 9 for the arctic excursion were Greg, Jim, James, Skippy, Tony and I for what looked like a decent day. The skies were scattered to broken with cloud base above the ridge with little to no wind on the deck as we left Parma. After a ride made shorter by brokeback humor we unloaded and checked things out. It was cold with cycles coming up, but the blue was mostly gone from the sky and cloud base was lowering.
We all started setting up with cycles continuing regularly, and birds working it around the canyon ridges. When we were ready to launch a large rain cell was working its way down the coast from Goleta so we waited for it to pass. As it did we recieved a little hail. Still no wind.
James was first off and climbed a bit over launch then headed out. I lauched and maintained at launch for a couple of turns then left for the by-pass. The air was unsettled with no real direction of flow, but with what seemed like a lot of mixing and areas of big sink. Somewhere over the roundhouse spine it warmed quickly but still sinky. We made the glide into Parma with only 300 to spare.
Shortly after landing it started to rain then it started snowing on launch. Not a great day, but no worse than the tows I took up at Enlau's on Friday morning. We had forty degree temps, 15mph SE wind and lots of thermic areas. Needless to say throwing down was challenging but fun. Finally we got blown/rained out and decided to wait and see what Sat. would have for us. Turned out to be 4-6 inches of snow at the lake so I headed back here hoping for some love. Oh well maybe tomorrow. See you at 9 Dean.
Andy