Weather systems

[Sauntress]

I hope this is the right place to discuss a phenomenon called in the jargon a "coastal trapped disturbance". In Australia it is called a Southerly Buster and here in Cantabria (N Spain) it is known as a "galerna". But whatever the name it is bad news. This is not a gale in the conventional sense but a sudden violent wind out of apparently nowhere, the requirements being a mountainous coast and hot, not to say sultry weather with no perceptible breeze. My very basic research suggests this is also a feature of the West Coast of the United States. There is a paper on the subject in the AMS journal entitled "Synoptic Forcing Of Coastal-Trapped Disturbances in the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer" in which reference is made to a particularly memorable event in 1985. What might that have been? My interest is that we were caught in one such which prompted me to investigate further and ask if any one else has has a similar experience.