Anyone used a Nasa Weatherman?

[Gunfleet]

Re: LA Chouannerie

Corrects himself. Of course it's le Chouan, la Chouannerie. Bloody French...

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[charles_reed]

Re: LA Chouannerie

Never mind - the Brits won't notice, they've lost all gender differences.

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[brians]

Re: Be aware of the place of probability

Charles

Very helpful thanks. However what I really want to know is - is German forecasting over say a typical 40 week cruising period - on the whole - more accurate and reliable than UK Met Office? If it is no better or indeed inferior, then I might as well go and buy Navtex.

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[charles_reed]

relative accuracies

I'd say there's little to choose, some of the local UK Met offices tend to be more accurate than others, but this has a lot to do with who is duty dog.

I've found the NOAA forecasts, using the American model to be better at guessing over the longer period and France Meteo to be as good as any. The trouble is that our Met Office is trying to extract cash out of us for their really excellent forecasting, when all around them all the other Met Offices are doing it for free as part of their public service.
If you really want first-class local forecasting you need to pay one of the routeing forecasters (mainly US) for a personal service. Most commercial shipping use these people and it's frequently worth making vhf contact with cruise lines and passing shipping to get their info especially if you're offshore.
Public service forecasting is handicapped by the size of the sea-areas, the delay in the transmission of their forecasts and the chaotic (in mathematic sense) nature of weather systems.

They all use the same corpus of information and if you tap into this, and over an extended period, check as to the accuracy of the various national offices, you'll both educate yourself and find your favourite. What will also happen is that you'll empathise with met men at being forced into an unnatural straightjacket by the demands for "simple" forecasts and you'll develop an appreciation the "might happen" isn't the same as "will happen".

I'm getting the Weatherman because I'm fed up by being caught out by the Navtex horizon of only 24 hours (36 at best) and the minute scale of the wefaxes over ssb.

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