Surf Forcasting

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Surf Forcasting
Topic Started: May 20 2008, 10:03 PM (205 Views)
stevyd	May 20 2008, 10:03 PM Post #1
Member Posts: 15 Group: Squad Member #995 Joined: March 21, 2008	were do you get long range forcasts? Is it windguru? how far in advance do they go and do they not become less acurate the further ahead you go?



andymcm	May 21 2008, 12:30 PM Post #2
Advanced Member Posts: 161 Group: committee Member #317 Joined: September 7, 2006	Hows it going, Try this link, its pretty comprehensive for forecasts. Look for forecast charts, and 3-9 days from G Meuller. But there are just loads of links on his page. http://www.greatweather.co.uk/ The best charts i reckon are on the mettoffice, look for the surface pressure charts. They don't go as far as ECMWF. http://www.metoffice.co.uk/ The shipping forecasts are good as well. There is one on the met office but here is the BBCs site for a bit of variety. You can get bouy reading there to. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/shipping/ Another place which is cool i think is the admiriltys tide predicitons. Saves me allot of horrible maths. http://easytide.ukho.gov.uk/EasyTide/EasyTide/index.aspx As for how accurate they are, i don't know. Certainly the further ahead in the future you look the less certain they can be and there are more variables that play on the weather. However even day to day forecasts can come in quicker or slower than expected. Hope all that melts your head.



Harry	May 21 2008, 06:22 PM Post #3
Advanced Member Posts: 1,288 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 9, 2004	Hey, Some good info from Andy there. I generally find the forecasts not really that accurate beyond about three or four days, especially if there are a series of lows crossing us over the space of a week. This kind of system seems to be very hard to predict with the weather often arriving sooner or later than expected. The opposite of this is a stable high pressure system which holds the lows in one place (more or less) and makes the weather much more predictable - maybe even up to a week or ten days away. Something else to realise is that swell forecasts are predictions based on predictions of the weather, so there's even more room for error to creep in. That's why it's good to have a look at the swell buoys to see if what's predicted is actually happening. There aren't really any long range swell forecasts (over a week) but there are long range synoptic charts for up to two weeks away from which you could predict the swell. Personally I think they are not really worth looking at - they just get your hopes up and then the swell either dosen't happen at all or comes in on a different day to that predicted, most likely when you can't get to the beach ;-) Magic Seaweed has some good tutorials on surf forecasting(including a section on range and accuracy). http://magicseaweed.com/content/surf-forecasting.php However their star ratings for surf spots are often wrong so I generally go to windguru for the swell size, wind speed and direction,etc and look at the charts on magic seaweed to get an overall picture of what's happening. It's a good idea to look at the synoptic charts too to see if you can work out how the highs and lows generate the winds that create the swell. Then, if you only get to look at the pressure charts (BBC TV weather or whatever) you'll still have a chance of knowing what the surf's going to be like. http://www.windguru.cz/ http://magicseaweed.com/UK-Ireland-MSW-Sur...rts/1/swell/in/ http://powersourcesurfboards.com has links to loads of different surf/weather forecasts and this book is fairly readable for a text book on surf forecasting: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surf-Science-Intro...g/dp/0906720362 Finally, can anyone remember if we've had such a long period of easterly winds before? I think there's been some east in the wind now for nearly two months - can that be right? Harry Chaos Theory and weather



stevyd	May 21 2008, 09:38 PM Post #4
Member Posts: 15 Group: Squad Member #995 Joined: March 21, 2008	Cheers boys, Im going to have to stop asking questions, the answers are too complicated. That will keep me busy for a while but you confirmed what i thought, anything past a week is pretty dodgy. Fingers crossed the drought will be over soon.


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