Good Greek weather site

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macd

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Apologies if this has been recommended before.
Anyone who's been in the Gulf of Corinth lately will know at least two things:
1. it's been bl**dy draughty;
2. almost no weather sites (gribs and national met offices included) seem to have had the slightest handle on predicting it.

After much mainly fruitless searching I found this site: http://forecast.uoa.gr/ICLAMS/index.php
("uoa" is University of Athens).
To use the site:
Select "high resolution forecast";
select area (Europe, Greece or Athens: the latter includes Saronic and Corinth gulfs);
select 'Sea surface wind' (the usual 10m wind graphics aren't so easy to read);
select time slot (or animate).

It predicted yesterday's conditions with uncanny accuracy: esssentially, a compact band of strong NE winds (we saw 37 knots apparent, running) arising in the Gulf of Andikirion, hurtling around Ak Makri Nicolaos, then curving along the main gulf before hitting Trizonia and points west. The modelling seems to allow for local macro effects, for which the Gulfs of Corinth/Patras seem otherwise poorly served. It also showed another wind hotspot in Kolpos Domvrainis, where we'd been battered a few days earlier. (Lovely area, by the way, and off the beaten path.)
I'd be much interested in Frank Singleton's thoughts on the site.
 
The UOA site is our weather site of preference. Had a lot of funding prior to the 2004 Olympics so it's particularly good for the Athens area. We use it every day and I'd estimate it is accurate about 80% of the time, which is more than any other we've tried.

Meteo is also good - www.meteo.gr
 
Thanks, Melody. Good to know it's routinely useful.

Incidentally, it's showing another strong wind plume similar to Sunday's for tomorrow afternoon: looks like it won't be a day for heading towards the Canal from Patras area.
 
Hi Debs.
Like most people I use regular gribs, mainly zygrib, although they're often poor at predicting the sort of localised effects I described in the Gulf of Corinth.

The Turkish Met office has a good reputation. This is one of their offerings specifically for conditions at sea: http://212.175.180.126/DTS/sea.php
You need to play around with it a bit: zoom, etc. It does a graphic display for a point, and even weather along a route (select start and end points and duration of passage).

One of the bigger issues in Turkey as summer turns to autumn is thunderstorm activity, which can be more prolonged and violent than in Greece. They scare te bejesus out of me, not so much for fear of fried electrics as the risk of strong wind from unpredicatable directions. Turkish Met Office as good as anywhere for predicting them, I think...or just look at the sky;) (which you've probably got used to telling you not very much during summer.) On gribs, the rainfall elment of the meteogram is in effect showing the risk of thunderstorms in a particular place, since the actual amount of rainfall forecast is an average over quite a wide area in which some places will miss out, others be clobbered.

Enjoy Turkey.
 
I use a variety of weather sources, including NOA and the GMDSS broadcasts. The key factor I believe is to understand where the source data for each forecast came from. Many of the free services on the web are fundamentally based on the NOAA GFS grib data which has either been massaged slightly or presented in a different format. It would of course be unwise to look at three or four web based forecasts that broadly agreed and assume you had a good forecast when all of the base forecast data has come from the same GFS model.

NOA run their own modelling programs.
Poseiodon (http://poseidon.hcmr.gr/) use base computer models that are not GFS based and which are different from the NOA models, they also have a small number of ocean buoys relaying real data.
The GMDSS forecasts for Greece can be obtained online at http://www.hnms.gr/hnms/english/navigation/navigation_html#.
I'm not sure what models meteo.gr uses but experience has shown their wind forecasts tend to be on the high side, which is a good thing I guess.
Gribs (zygrib, ugrib et. al.) all use the NOAA GFS data they just display it a little differently.

Usually I will use all these weather sources because they all have a different data source.
 
rjcoles said:
Can you get the Meteo forecast in English?
Click to expand...

I don't think it has an English site but there is more than one way to use the Meteo site. if you select ΧΑΡΤΕΣ which is Charts and the second Menu option in from the right, you will see that you can choose ΙΣΤΙΟΠΛΙΟΚΟΙ ΧΑΡΤΕΣ which is sailing charts (it has a little sailboat next to it to help you) and you can then just click on the sea area you are interested in.

You can get to the same place via the ΘΑΛΑΣΣΕΣ (Seas) Menu option.

We tend to use the pages that give 3-hourly forecasts for the next few days for each individual area, island, town, etc. rather than the charts. If you type the place name you want into the search box it should bring up both the Greek and English names I think so you can select the place even if you can't read Greek. There is an option on these pages to display and print the information in English.
 
I tend to look at a few of the site , then if I still not sure , go 50 50 and remove half I don't like , if still not happy I call a friend , if that don't work I ask Ask the Audience .
If still not convince I rise a sail and go out and find out for my self , that normal works the best .
If I had to pick one it has to be , http://poseidon.hcmr.gr for greece , I also been useing it on Turkey
 
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sailaboutvic said:
I tend to look at a few of the site , then if I still not sure , go 50 50 and remove half I don't like , if still not happy I call a friend , if that don't work I ask Ask the Audience .
If still not convince I rise a sail and go out and find out for my self , that normal works the best .
If I had to pick one it has to be , http://poseidon.hcmr.gr for greece , I also been useing it on Turkey
Click to expand...

The best weather forecaster I ever saw was a stone. The sign with it said something like:

If it's dry it's sunny
If it's wet it's raining
If it's white it's snowing
If you can't see it it's foggy
If it's gone it's windy

and so on..
 
Good morning:

A friend recently sent me a link to Windyty which I had never heard of previously. I haven't used it for real but it looks like it might have promise: https://www.windyty.com/?2015-08-03-03,37.052,27.596,9

I don't know if I believe the claim that it is the work of an amateur coder or not but I will be checking this site daily to check its accuracy and usefulness.

Cheers

Squeaky
 
macd said:
...The Turkish Met office has a good reputation. This is one of their offerings specifically for conditions at sea: http://212.175.180.126/DTS/sea.php
You need to play around with it a bit: zoom, etc. It does a graphic display for a point, and even weather along a route (select start and end points and duration of passage).
...
Click to expand...

I've been using the Turkish site in the Ionian, Sicily, Sardinia & now the Balearics over the last 18 months. Its as accurate, more so IMO, than the GFS GRIB outputs and, as said above, very flexible once you get used to it. The caveat may be that I use it on a laptop which is what it seems designed for, I tried it on friends tablet and it didnt work as well but that could be my poor finger pointy skills (the mouse is so much more precise!)

NB. Although you cant 'download' the output, if you get a route displayed for 24 or 36 hrs (or whatever) just leave the browser window open. The data stays in place and will still be usable throughout
 
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I am checking this site (windyty) regularly this summer in the Ionian and I have to say that is accurate.
HNMS is also ok or Meteo.

Poseidon so so...
 
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