Taitonga - Weatherlinks

Weather and currents

Wetterinfos und Strömungen

 - Global
- Local
- Pacific
- Caribbean
- UNDER WAY - How to: emails, Gribfiles, SSB-Weathercharts, Tides, Pilotcharts


"Es kommt nicht darauf an, woher der Wind weht, sondern wie man die Segel setzt."
Sokrates

GLOBAL:
  • El Nino / El Nina - Forecast - Discussion


    		•
    LOCAL WEATHER
     We use Windguru and Windfinder for Forecasts especially when we are close to shore, because l think they uses local „corrections“, which are not included in the gibfiles (anyway: Do not trust forecasts! Use your senses)
  • Windfinder: Colon
  • Windguru - Panama-City


    		•
    PACIFIC
     Gripfiles via zygrip (e.g. via Iridium)
    NOAA-Data via query@saildocs.com
    Oscar-Currents from NOAA-Data via query@svsarana.com
    Weathergram from Bob McDavitt in Newzealand

    Panama:
  • Windguru: Panama-City, only sometimes accurate => just gives an idea! We had forecasts with 25kn and no wind, aswell forecasts with 3kn and wind of 25kn aswell no-rain-forecasts with 2 hours of tropicrain pouring down, swells are mostly to high announced, but be alert at 1m+ from S at La Playita
  • Panama, Balboa-Pacific-Tides (240kb), more accurate than Navionics and wxtide (both have values too low!!), here are maybe a bit high values => safer!
  • Rainradar Colon-Panama-City (big files!), just to get an impression about current rain in the area 40nm-around Panama-City

    • West ...:
  • Fastseas.com - free Weatherrouting - you can insert your boats polardiagram for routing (big files!), good for planning (based on windytv.com (analog to nullschool)
  • windytv.com (big files!) - Big Picture to doublecheck e.g. passageweather
  • Passageweather (big files!), good for planning overview and swellforecast, e.g. the nasty S-swells coming into the Panama-Bay! Some expierienced cruiser say that for this region this modell is more accurate than NOAA
  • earth.nullschool.net (big files!) - Big Picture to doublecheck e.g. passageweather
    (How to use earth.nullschool.net - Youtube-Video)

    • We use following links via SSB (and Internet) to get the whole story in addition to the gribs
  • 24h-Surface-Forecast E-Pacific, NOAA (35kb) - (Big Picture)
  • 24h-Surface-Forecast E-Pacific, NOAA (35kb) - (Big Picture)
  • 24h-Wind/Wave-Forecast E-Pacific, NOAA (43kb)
  • 72h-Surface-Forecast E-Pacific, NOAA (36kb) - (Big Picture)
  • 72h-Wind/Wave-Forecast E-Pacific, NOAA (43kb)
  • Eastern Pacific Tropical Weather Discussion (Text), NOAA (13kb)

  • NOAA - the whole picture-package (804kb !) - to big for SSB - complete combination of the graphic Forecasts


    		•
    CARIBBEAN:
     Generell:
  • Actual Weathergraphic NOAA
  • 24h Forecast Graphic NOAA (available on SSB aswell)
  • 48h Forecast Graphic NOAA (available on SSB aswell)
  • 72h Forecast Graphic NOAA (available on SSB aswell)
  • Satellite Images Storm Carib
  • Offshore Waters Forecast (Caribbean / SW-Atlantic)
  • Atlantic Tropical Weather Discussion (Text) - (Big Picture and Hazards)


    • Hurricanewatch
  • NOAA - National Hurricane Center
  • National Hurricane Center-text outlook
  • NHC Experimental Marine Graphicast
  • HurricaneTrack.com - News, Information, Live Hurricane Coverage - HurricaneTrack.com provides easy to understand hurricane news, information and live coverage of hurricane landfalls.
  • Tropical Storm Risk.com - long-range forecasts of hurricane, typhoon and cyclone worldwide


    		•
    UNDER WAY - How to
    Emails Under Way
     We get weatherinfos via Internet or Iridium (some via SSB).
    We have 5 different email-adresses from different providers for this purpose (we do not tell these adresses to anyone!). The reasons for having that many are
    - If one adress is blocked e.g. spam or big data-files or just not working we can use another one
    - Sometimes e.g. gmail blocks the account, because they do not understand, that we are travelling and change countries aswell we use a program to hide our ip-adress out of security-reasons and change countries through that
    All these adresses are configured in Thunderbird as "only text" because some mailrobots will refuse html AND only-text-mails are smaller files!

    We use the free WEATHERGRAM (ca. weekly) from Bob McDavitt in Newzealand covering the whole S-Pacific and the Way from Panama to Galapagos
    Send an email to yotreps@pangolin.co.nz - subjectline must be free
    in the body (casesensitive): WEATHERGRAM

    NOAA-Data via query@saildocs.com to where we send an email request to and recieve the data in an email-answer on the spot or after a couple of minutes (it should be possible to get the weatherinfo directly from NOAA aswell, but to find the exact page on their website was impossible for me)
    For infos on how and what to recieve, send an email to query@saildocs.com (subjectline can be anything or free): in the body:
    send info
    send index

    Oscar-Currents from NOAA-Data via query@svsarana.com
    subjectline - not relevant:
    body (for how to): SEND OSCAR CURRENT
    body (for area): 10N,10S,100W,70W


    Gribfiles
     We use gribfiles for planning our passages, they were the only source during our atlantic-crossing via sat-phone:
  • Gribfiledownloads via Zygrib
    • (We like Zygrip more than Ugrib, because we can get more specific data for our specified area, which means smaller files)


    SSB-Chart-Programs
     We get some weathercharts mentioned above through our SSB, which we connect with an audiocable with out laptop. We use following software for this:
  • MScan Meteo Pro
  • JVComm32


    • Tides
     For tidesprediction we use our Raymarinecharts and following software:
  • WXTide
    • (Not really accurate in Grenada, Clarkscourtbay, when I compared the waterlevel at the shoreline with the tidepredictions)


    Pilotcharts
    For generall planning we have a look in the Pilotcharts of the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), which shows averages in prevailing winds and currents, etc:
  • NGA Pilotcharts


    		•

    Taitonga.net, © Dagmar und Christian Sahr,