Trawling the web looking for weather forecasts has become something of a preoccupation for most of the sailors I know during this awful summer.
There are so many weather sites it's difficult to know which to believe. But one I am grateful to have discovered is www.magicseaweed.com.
This is a site intended for surfing enthusiasts (that's surfing as in surfboards on beach, not internet surfing!) but it has all kinds of invaluable weather information for yachties, too. And the surf reports, swell charts and wave buoys are not without interest, either.
Most useful part of the site is a colour-coded wind forecast for the week ahead, which plays as an animation, showing how depressions and areas of high pressure are likely to move over the next few days, and the speed and direction of the breezes they will bring.
You can stop the animation and then click through it page by page, studying the forecast in more detail at three hour intervals. Of course, as with all longer range forecasts, it gets less reliable as time goes on, but it's an extremely useful guide.
Better still, you can click on another tab, and the schematic wind map is replaced by pressure charts, again showing as an animation, which can also be paused and then studied frame by frame. Fronts are not shown on the charts, but precipitation is.
Now click on the “More tools” tab, and you have an embarrassment of riches. There are wind forecasts from NOAA, the BBC and the Belgian source MUMM (invaluable for those who sail in the North Sea).
There are synoptic charts for the next few days, too, from GFS, the UK Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting.
All of this information is available elsewhere on the web, of course, but having it all presented to you on a single page makes a very efficient way of comparing and contrasting. It's interesting to study all the different models, and then make your own best guess about the likely weather pattern for the days ahead.
There are plenty of webcams, too, scattered around the coast, if you've got time to spare to study them. But if you just want a quick answer to the question: 'which way shall we go this weekend?', simply clicking on the “latest wind” icon will probably be enough.
Avoid the areas of deep blue (no wind) and deep red (far too much) and aim for the neutral tones in between, and you should have a great sail (or surf for that matter)!
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www.magicseaweed.com
is an invaluable source of weather information, with lots of links to authoritative sites, all provided in an easily navigated package. And it's global in scope, too. A must-add for the “favourites” on any onboard computer.
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