The Santa Ynez Moutains are an East-West oriented mountain range on the north edge of the Santa Barbara Channel and the Southern California Bight. Several papers have related these mountian, and those immideatly behind to effects in the Southern California Bight such as the mesoscale Catalina Eddy. An extensive network of automated meteorolgical stations on the slope, the coast, meteorogical buoys, oil platforms and islands in the immediate lee provides an unusaually opportunity to examine lee side effects. A radar profiler is located on the foot of the center of this range. An operatinal RAOB station is on the western end of the range.

Two years of summer data shows that the expected lee side flow with nominally mid- level winds forcasted by the operational models does not occur. Instead, the marine layer was never found to be pushed back away from the southern slope of the Santa Ynez. Westerly marine air was maintained at the coast, over the water and at the islands. Expected northerly flow was not maintained at the radar profiler, but offten more East-West an irregular. In addition, the RAOB station wind directions below 3km were substantially differenent from the radar profiler station which is 50 km to the east. The conclusion is that the operational upper air analysis is inadaquate for the conditions in the lee of the Santa Ynez Mountains.