Weather Actuals – the WOW factor!
by Frank Singleton 12 Feb 2014 15:38 GMT
12 February 2014
Nobody in their right mind would go to sea without a weather forecast, but many sailors find that knowing about actual weather can be reassuring - a comfort blanket. Dinghy sailors, especially those sailing on inland waters, probably make more use of actuals, although these should always be used with care. The actual at Chew Valley SC, at 0900 may bear little resemblance to weather at midday.
There are many sources of actual weather data, such as the Met Office coastal station page, their Land Network page, Met Éireann, Jersey Met, the NOAA Data buoy site and Météo-Bretagne. These are high quality observations from regularly maintained equipment but are fairly few in number.
In addition to these "official" sites, there are many privately run automatic weather stations inland and around our coasts. Some of the coastal locations are listed as 'Unofficial Weather Sites' on Frank Singleton's weather site...
Many more observations can be found on WOW, the Weather Observations Website run by the Met Office supported by the Royal Meteorological Society and the Department for Education. This is part of a worldwide move, led by the UK, to gather, and make generally available, the maximum amount of weather information.
Register on the WOW Home page, sign in and you can have access to an incredible amount of weather information. Click on a location and a dropdown panel gives the latest data available, usually minutes old. A word of caution; the observations are not quality controlled; errors can and do occur. There is a rather clumsy map display that lets you compare winds, temperature, etc with nearby stations.
Stations
These stations provide information for studying climate; something that concerns us all. After some technical problems have been sorted out, they will be used in detailed weather prediction models. The data are also useful to informed users such as sailors.
So far, WOW has spread across Europe but not reached much of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is right across the USA and Australia but there are still only a few locations in New Zealand and South America.
Does your club or sailing school have an automatic weather station? Or, do you? If so, you might like to take part in this potentially valuable global network and share your data with others in real time.
Contact details are on the WOW site.
To read more about weather, weather forecasts, how to get and use them, see Frank Singleton's Weather Site.
Note: There is a known problem with IOS 7 on iPads and WOW often crashes on these devices.