• Sailing is all about the Weather.

    Big into the exploration of Atlantic Hurricanes since Katrina came uninvited into his world, James (Jim) Gurley (JamesG161) has followed every Tropical Storm birthed in Atlantic, Gulf and Caribbean waters since. Being a boater, he knows that we often need more time to prepare than we get from the TV weather folk. Jim relies on the science of storm development to share early warning info with friends and fellow boaters.

    Early in 2018, Jim and John Shepard, (JSSailem) started to chat about the weather data available. John asked Jim to help forecast Pacific NW storms, and this morphed into discussions on weather forecasting.

    For John, sailing in the PNW is sometimes hit and miss. One day is ugly, then a string of beautiful days but no wind, followed by a series of blue-sky days and 12 knot breezes. Being ready for those great sailing days means you need to look to the Pacific Ocean and what is brewing. John has been into Pacific NW Weather since the 1970’s when his first PNW November storm hit bringing more than 40 days and 40 nights of continual rain.

    Together we want to share information, new APPs, safety, and thoughts about letting the weather help you. Identify some of the resources for sailors and help prepare you for your next sailboat outing.

    It is far better to go out on the water knowing what to expect in weather terms, than to be out on the water and see dark ominous clouds suddenly appear, unprepared.

Your favorite weather website?

F

fhujber

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Aug 17, 2017
44
Catalina Catalina 30 MKII 5346 Melbourne Yacht Club
For hurricanes, which seem to be the topic of the week, I use Mike's Weather page at:
http://spaghettimodels.com/
For general weather forecasts, I use Weather Underground:
https://www.wunderground.com/
Some folks at MYC use Sailflow, at:
http://www.sailflow.com/
Sailflow is fairly new to me so I haven;t used it much. But it does seem to provide better wind data.
Windguru has also been helpful.
 
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rgranger

rgranger

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Jan 19, 2010
12,370
Hobie 16 & Rhodes 22 Skeeter Charleston
On my phone I have four Apps

NOAA radar
Windy
Weather
Weather Live

I do not find "Weather" to be that useful.

Windy is nice because you can see the wind flow but if you hold your finger down on a particular spot on the map, it will pop up a weather forecast for that specific area.

The NOAA radar app is nice for dodging weather. You can see a cell coming and know if it will hit. I've been on the lake and we could see a T-cell in the distance and know what part of the lake was going to get hit. So we moved over or took cover.
 
shemandr

shemandr

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Jan 1, 2006
7,074
Slickcraft 26 Sailfish
Sailflow was popular among my sailing friends a decade ago - in fact I even paid for it for a while until I learned everyone else was viewing for free. They never would put a sensor in the most relevant spot for our race venue (Robins Island.) It was actually first a site for wind surfers. Weather Underground then became popular but they went for a mass market and the local wind forecasts suffered. Now I use Intellicast on my laptop which is OK - it does tie in with local, privately maintained, stations which offers real time winds. For forecasts I like weather.gov. There is a wealth of info there but you have to work at getting it. And, the formats are constantly changing. I have Storm on my phone for radar updates.
 
P

Pat

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Jun 7, 2004
1,250
Oday 272LE Ninnescah Yacht Club, Wichita, Ks.
We have excellent weather information available here in Wichita for the entire state of Kansas, and region actually. That, plus our YC has a weather station at our club that gives the current winds, peak and minimum, barometer, wind, temperature, etc. We can dial up the current weather from our computers which is great....the NWS Wichita has radar and an even more complete up to the minute conditions that again, can be dialed up from home....our members really take advantage of the club's weather station so although surprise storms are possible, also here on the plains, the sky usually gives you a great view
of an approaching storm....Patrick
 
kloudie1

kloudie1

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Nov 6, 2006
9,893
Hunter 34 Mandeville Louisiana
I use Mikes Weather Page, NOAA/NHC pages, Weather Underground (although their coverage has degraded since Intellicast bought them), and Golden Triangle.. http://www.beaumontweather.com/
The Beaumont site has some slightly different content than Mike's ..
The first hurricane I can remember was Hurricane Audrey in 1957.. Over 500 people were killed on the south west coast of Louisiana.. We didn't have a TV back then so all info was from radio.. My dad was a a HAM guy so he got a bit of info from that network of tech folks..
 
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rgranger

rgranger

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Jan 19, 2010
12,370
Hobie 16 & Rhodes 22 Skeeter Charleston
No one has mentioned passageweather.com

I have used it in the Chesapeake Bay and the Outerbanks of NC
 
dziedzicmj

dziedzicmj

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Aug 13, 2012
533
Catalina 270 Ottawa
I bet that the usefulness (accuracy?) of any web site depends on the location you are interested in.
Where I am, Sailflow has more accurate forecasts than Windfinder. Another interesting wind forecast site is WindGURU. Especially, its short term 4 km (HRW) forecast.
The Weather Underground has a quite reasonable 10-day forecast (this is for my weather station's location).
There is nothing better than the government site for radar information (this is where everyone else gets the data in the first place).
 
Don S/V ILLusion

Don S/V ILLusion

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Sep 25, 2008
7,096
Alden 50 Sarasota, Florida
It may be old fashioned but reading the NWS and NHC forecasts on which all of the prognosticators base their versions seems pretty reliable and, as most of us don't seem to be blue water sailors, local TV.
 
G

gettinthere

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Nov 26, 2008
1,966
Endeavour 42 Cruisin
If what you are looking for is hurricane forecasting; Mike's, weather underground, Chris Parker and others use Tropical Tidbits. All the computer models easily viewed. Levi does a nice job in his videos as well.
 
Davidasailor26

Davidasailor26

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May 17, 2004
5,079
Beneteau Oceanis 37 Havre de Grace
+1 for Mike's, Tropical Tidbits, and NHC for hurricanes. I like the little bit of discussion on Mike's and go to the others if the have a map the he isn't importing.

For general weather forecasts wunderground is my preferred interface. I don't find the data any better or worse so I just go to the site with the densest info. Their scientific discussion is nice too.

WindAlert (same company as Sail flow) is my preference for real time winds and forecasts. They havd pretty much everything I want for that.

AccuWeather has a nice 120 minute forecast that's good for telling the arrival time of incoming rain. Doesn't work for cells that are popping up and disappearing but works if the cells are stable.

One thing I wish I could find is a better animated radar. Everything I try sort of works but in areas with sketchy cell coverage they get super flakey. I wouldn't think it would be so hard to send a few frames of a picture but they always seem to get garbled or leave off big chunks of the image.
 
G

glaufman

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May 23, 2016
217
O'Day 1984 23 Island Park, NY
I use a combo of nhc and weathernerds.org for hurricanes... Those European models were really the best at predicting the path of Sandy... Combo of nws and magicseaweed for sailing weather
 
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