Disappearing Beaufort Scale!

Zagato

Zagato

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I have just looked at the Chichester Harbour Conservancy website which seems to have been redesigned for the worse :confused: In the past you could click on it's nice blue pages and you could quickly see wind direction, tides and wind speed, MPH and Beaufort Scale. The latter seems to have gone from all the forecasts there are links to as well :mad:
 
Zagato said:
I have just looked at the Chichester Harbour Conservancy website which seems to have been redesigned for the worse :confused: In the past you could click on it's nice blue pages and you could quickly see wind direction, tides and wind speed, MPH and Beaufort Scale. The latter seems to have gone from all the forecasts there are links to as well :mad:
Click to expand...

And good riddance. I would rather have knots, mph or m/s any day.
 
Unfortunately, Beaufort scale is very distant from the knowledge of present day mariners. As already said, are we not better off with knots? I know I am:D:D
 
I can't imagine a shipping forecast or inshore waters forecast using knots, mph, kph or any other non-beaufort system - it would have to take far longer to broadcast.
Also, the beaufort scale is totally international, used worldwide and avoids any confusion over which units are in use in johnie foreigners' forecasts.
 
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Monique said:
Unfortunately, Beaufort scale is very distant from the knowledge of present day mariners.
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?

Am I secretly operating in the past?

I know what a force 4 is, or a force 7. I'd have to think quite hard about what those are in knots, and have no idea at all about metres per second.

Pete
 
The Beaufort scale gives a range of wind speed in each force and in real life you do not have a constant steady breeze so how can you pinpoint down to a specific speed in knots?
 
Zagato said:
I have just looked at the Chichester Harbour Conservancy website which seems to have been redesigned for the worse :confused: In the past you could click on it's nice blue pages and you could quickly see wind direction, tides and wind speed, MPH and Beaufort Scale. The latter seems to have gone from all the forecasts there are links to as well :mad:
Click to expand...

The link to the Inshore Waters Forecast ( called "Sailing forecast") in the drop down list in the top RH corner of the home page gives the windspeeds in Beaufort scale numbers.

The reports from Chimet etc., from the same drop down list, give current windspeeds in knots and Beaufort force .

The general Met. Office forecast pages, also accessible from the drop down lists can be customised to give windspeeds in mph, km per hr or knots.

From the links further down the page the BBC weather forecasts can be customised to show wind speed in mph or km/h and
the XC weather pages can be customised to show knots, mph, km/h, mps or Beaufort forces.

:)
 
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Given that forecasts are in the Beaufort scale and we see the results on our wind instruments, thus correlating the two, I'm surpised why anybody would want to choose one or the other. They both tell us much the same thing, albeit knots being a specific within a range.
 
stuey_two said:
I can't imagine a shipping forecast or inshore waters forecast using knots, mph, kph or any other non-beaufort system - it would have to take far longer to broadcast.
Also, the beaufort scale is totally international, used worldwide and avoids any confusion over which units are in use in johnie foreigners' forecasts.
Click to expand...

Are you serious?

Force 3 is 7 to 10 knots.
Force 4 is 11 to 15 knots

If its 3 gusting 4 you may think its 10 gusting 12 or 7 gusting 15. Big difference. Especially if the forecast is actually 8 gusting 13.

It really doesn't take any longer to give you the proper numbers.

Personally, I find the aviation wind forecasts much more useful as they give the ranges in knots and their abbreviated forms convey so much more information is much less time.

In dinosaur times when the only way of getting weather was likening to a cackly forecast on a "wireless" I can see the need for a simple system like Beaufort that had single numbers.

These days most weather information is a data stream to a computer or other device and even with data volume considerations TAF or a METAR type format is so much more efficient.
 
Well as an ex aviator I really appreciate wind speeds in knots.
But from a sailing point of view I like the Beaufort Scale.
I have wind readout in kts and bft from two separate instruments on the boat. The bft gives me an idea that I ought to reef/should have reefed/just need the staysail/stay on the mooring etc.
Just works for me. :)
 
It was always good practice to determine which scale was being used. I once set out in a hurry with a friend from Ostend because the forecast in the harbour office was 5-7. Since we experienced a near calm all the way we concluded that it must have been knots.
 
Monique said:
Unfortunately, Beaufort scale is very distant from the knowledge of present day mariners. As already said, are we not better off with knots? I know I am:D:D
Click to expand...

I think it rather depends on your vintage. If you started sailing with digital wind instruments you will be comfortable with knots. If you started before they were in use you tend to think in terms of the Beaufort scale and probably became used to equating the feel of the wind and look of the sea with those familiar numbers.

There are a lot of "present day mariners" in the latter category.
 
Is the UK dumping the Beaufort Scale at last, as most everyone else did long, long ago?

Maybe you will be able to modernise and dispose of your Merryweather Tempest Prognosticators sometime soon and start using those modern barometers? No more waiting to see if your leeches ring the bell.
 
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