March is certainly living up to its windy reputation this year. No sooner do people start thinking of launching their boats than along comes “the worst storm of the winter” with dire predictions of trees uprooted and structural damage.
The Coastguards were warning us all not to visit the coast, never mind not to put out to sea. The latter advice was probably superfluous, in the light of one of the worst Shipping Forecasts I can remember.
Not only was the tea time forecast on Sunday liberally sprinkled with 10s and 11s and even a touch of hurricane force 12 in Shannon, but there were extreme sea state descriptions I cannot remember hearing before.
We're all familiar with the summer forecasts: smooth (no wind, you'll be motoring), slight (you can enjoy a light airs sail if you're not in a hurry to get somewhere, in which case you'll be motoring), moderate (a good breeze, and not too uncomfortable: ideal passage-making conditions), rough (starting to get uncomfortable), very rough (you probably don't want to be out there) and high (you definitely don't want to be out there).
On Sunday there were two grades beyond that: very high (beam me up, Scotty) and “phenomenal” (speaks for itself). So just what counts as phenomenal?
In the internet age, on days when it is too rough to go sailing, there's a lot of fun to be had trawling around the weather websites looking at just how bad things are. I particularly like Magic Seaweed, the surfers' site, for its animated predictions of wind strength and wave height.
It told us that, though the centre of the depression would be tracking north of us, the winds on our bit of the coast would reach at least F9. Time to go down to the harbour with extra warps and fenders…
Was the weather really going to be as bad as forecast? There was a degree of scepticism among the experts sheltering in the yacht club bar (it was obviously too windy to get on with the fitting out.)
Ever since the famous 1987 “hurricane” (can it really be nearly 21 years ago?) there has been a suspicion that the Met Office tends to over-estimate wind strengths, to avoid the risk of ever being accused of under-estimating again.
“It's never really as bad as they say,” one sage assured us. But is that true? One of the real gems of the internet is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Data Buoy Centre website which tells you, in real time, not what is forecast, but what is actually happening.
A glance at the data from station no 62081, K2 buoy (my favourite, in the open Atlantic off the SW corner of Ireland) showed that conditions were indeed “phenomenal.” Wave height reached 58 feet between 0600 and 0700 yesterday morning. That's actual, scientific measurement, not anybody's guesstimate.
Things were only half as bad at the Channel Lightship, but 26 feet, which is what wave height peaked at there yesterday afternoon, would have been ooh-err enough, thank you very much.
We're incredibly lucky to have so much information instantly available - a relatively recent luxury. It should help us avoid the danger of ever being caught out in “phenomenal” conditions. And it certainly beats the traditional “magic seaweed” method of weather forecasting.
For more information visit magicseaweed.com
and www.ndbc.noaa.gov
