I am familiar with this site and check the patterns regularly before I make any channel crossings. It's a great way to monitor the patterns if you watch it for a few days before you go. Since it only gives you a 12 hour history it doesn't help in reading data from say a week or a month ago. At least I haven't figured that out yet.
Sven,
I have a friend that was at Avalon the weekend you were out and he said the NOAA broadcasts were reporting gusts in excess of 50 knots on the back side of Catalina on Saturday Nov. 26th. Sorry, that's only second hand information.
If you really need to know you can try to sort out all the buoy data from NOAA at:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/
Let me know if you figure out how to get wind history data.