BBC Shipping Forecast – Inshore waters or Outlook, poll RESULTS

[theotter]

As the post slips further down the list so the rate of votes cast has petered out to the point of wrapping it up. Around 640 people viewed the post out of which a disappointing 82 cast a vote. So here are the poll questions and the number of votes cast:

I am a coastal sailor and am happy with the present format = 26 (late surge!)
I am an offshore sailor and am happy with the present format = 6
I am a coastal sailor and would prefer an outlook forecast rather than inshore waters = 30
I am a offshore sailor and would prefer an outlook forecast rather than inshore waters = 20

So those voting for an out look forecast have it, 50 to 32. Nothing startling but the number of coastal sailors preferring an outlook rather than inshore waters is interesting. This, of course, is only a snap shot of opinion and does not represent the views of many other users e.g. fishermen, commercial vessels etc (and most yachtsmen judging by the voting!)

Of the various comments to the post, the majority were from those who sail on the west coast of Scotland, outlining the difficulties they have in getting forecasts in general. The unique make up of the coastline, with its islands forming inner and outer seas, lends understandably to the inshore forecast having more significance. I suspected this would be so and fair comment. Would there be a case therefore to lobby for that area to be divided up more (no doubt at the expense of somewhere else). Others commented that they relied on the inshore waters forecast for making their decision whether to return across the Channel. I don’t follow this because as I said in the poll preamble, the difference between the inshore and offshore forecast is rarely so significant, apart from the obvious like offshore winds, as to warrant that decision being based on one or the other.

I don’t think there is enough evidence to go rushing to the RYA requesting they investigate further!

 

[BrendanS]

640 refers the number of views, not the number of people who viewed the thread. Most people will view a thread multiple times, as more posts are added. It's possible that less than a hundred people viewed the thread, and viewed the thread multiple times.

 

[franksingleton]

Not being a frequent user of the YBW forum, I did not know about this survey. However, I would like to rehearse the rationale for the decision to discontinue the extended inshore waters outlook on the HMCG VHF and make a few comments about outlook forecasts..
First and foremost this outlook was always constrained by the length of time available and it only ever was a brief and rather unsatisfactory service. Matters came to a head when the MCA greatly improved the VHF MSI broadcasts to a 3 hourly, LT schedule with four new forecasts a day, a service bettered nowhere in Europe. Given the amount of time now spent on broadcasting weather, something had to go. The extended outlook was the obvious choice. To produce a longer, more detailed outlook was a non-starter. For coastal sailors, making short passages, the forecast for today and tomorrow clearly were rightly regarded as the most important.
The decision to drop the extended outlook was not taken lightly. The main factor considered was that, being so brief, it could only ever be a headline. That, in itself, would be fine if that was how it was used. However, the perception was that many used it and nothing else for their forward planning over the next few days. This was a surprise and a concern to HMCG who, perhaps naively, rather assumed that sailors would use the extended outlook to decide whether or not to seek better information for their decision making. It was clear that sailors were making sailing decisions on the basis of the short and very general 3 to 5 day outlook.
There is a far better service on NAVTEX 518 kHz once a day. This gives an extended outlook for sea areas relevant to the three UK NAVTEX stations. There are three different outlooks, one for each NAVTEX station. The thinking was that those that really needed to be planning on such a time frame, and making longer sea passages than just a few miles along the coast, should have NAVTEX fitted; NAVTEX is the prime method for the broadcast of MSI for use up to 150 miles (or so) offshore. With NAVTEX, they would be able to get the broadcasts when at sea. Otherwise, when in harbour and for those not making long passages and not equipped with NAVTEX, the whole set of these outlooks is available on the BBC website. (Why not the Met Office site is a mystery that I have not yet had explained to me.)
So, for outlook purposes, you have the NAVTEX version plus information from several other sources. Of these, the source that I always recommend is global GRIB output (ie those with a 1 or 0.5 degree spacing, not the so-called high resolution versions). The global GRIBs are free from many sources, eg Saildocs, MailASail, GlobalMarineNet by email, UGrib by ftp, PassageWeather, Windfinder by web browser. Having used and looked closely at GRIB output it is clear that the global GRIBs give very good forecasts of wind over the open sea up to 48 hours ahead. They give less good forecasts inshore over that time frame when meso-scale forecasts may do better. The Met Office forecast, again on the BBC site, called “Coastal Forecasts” will probably give the best indication of inshore winds. Beyond 36 hours, general patterns will be well forecast but not the detail. Small scale variability in the atmosphere, call it chaos if you like, is such that detailed prediction beyond about 36 hours is pie in the sky. That is why the Met Office only runs its meso-scale model to 48 hours and only uses the data to about 36 hours.
I realise that I am straying a little off the original point of this post, ie the inshore waters outlook. I have a habit of trying to dot is and cross ts.