Inshore Forecast - Channel Islands

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Stoshak

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To me the biggest difference is that Jersey Met are giving some idea of when changes will happen. Met office could improve by uising words such as soon (6-12 hrs) or later(more than 12 hrs) to give some idea of when the wind will alter.
 
I would say it is probably a re written Jersey Met Shipping forecast.

http://www.jerseymet.gov.je/

I must admit I tend to use Jersy Met which covers the whole of the Channel Islands area but mainly XC and Windguru mixed in with looking out of the window and refering to my piece of dry seweed and the stone outside the window hanging on a piece of string and then I make my own mind up!
 
Boathook said:
To me the biggest difference is that Jersey Met are giving some idea of when changes will happen. Met office could improve by uising words such as soon (6-12 hrs) or later(more than 12 hrs) to give some idea of when the wind will alter.
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I generally find this variant of the inshore waters more usable. There are currently a sprinkling of laters through most areas.
 
Lyme Regis to Isles of...

And for that matter, an 'inshore waters' forecast that starts half way round Lyme Bay and ends half way to the Southern Ocean (or might as well be, for all the similarity of the Isles of Scilly to Lyme Bay) is not much blinking use. That's why they keep on saying 'in the west' - no indication of where 'west' stops. The Lizard, possibly.
 
Guernsey to Dartmouth on Sunday?

The fronts coming through have been so unpredictable for weeks but it looks as if I have a window on Sunday 1st July or Monday 2nd to do a Guernsey to Dartmouth crossing in my engine-less 24ft classic Folkboat - that's based on the http://www.jerseymet.gov.je forecast of F4 easing to F3 with no gusts and same with windguru for Devon. If you work for the Met office and know something I don't please let me know :)
 
voicilesrosbifs said:
And for that matter, an 'inshore waters' forecast that starts half way round Lyme Bay and ends half way to the Southern Ocean (or might as well be, for all the similarity of the Isles of Scilly to Lyme Bay) is not much blinking use. That's why they keep on saying 'in the west' - no indication of where 'west' stops. The Lizard, possibly.
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We sail mostly in the Plymouth area. The inshore waters forecasts seem to leave us down the crack between "east" and "west".
 
Those texts are prepared by Jersey Met and are what goes out on their VHF broadcast or are very similar.

This is an explanation, not a defence. I am a sailor and would like to see more detail as well as any of you.

It is not so much that the forecasters do not care. It is really a question of what can be broadcast in the available time made available. HMCG broadcast weather 8 times a day for 18 areas. . In order to complete all forecasts in a useful timescale with the VHF channels at their disposal, they have to avoid possible interference between broadcasts from different stations.

That means that they can only allocate a certain amount of time to each area. The Channel Islands forecasters do not have that constraint. At meetings where the current schedules were proposed and discussed, HMCG made it quite clear that they had other jobs in addition to reading out the weather forecast. A further constraint, quite simply is cost. The Met Office has to charge MCA for time spent in producing texts of forecasts. MCA have to justify that expense to Treasury. I have not been a fly on that particular wall but MCA probably justify their costs in terms of meeting the requirements of the GMDSS under SOLAS. Were they to want information that exceeded the requirements of the GMDSS, then that would involve more Met Office man-hours. If anyone on this forum is from HMT, they might wish to say what HMT reaction would be.

Before anyone says that the Met Office is funded by us as taxpayers, let me remind you that it operates a Trading Fund. Look it up, read the small print and you might be able to understand the financial aspects.
 
Aries said:
Look at the coastal forecasts available from here: http://marine.meteoconsult.co.uk/mar/sommaire_marine.php?langue=an& They provide much more localised forecasts for both sides of the North Sea and Channel, as well as for other areas. If htye can do this, why not our UK Met Office?
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Those forecasts by MétéoConsult are produced automatically from the output of NWP models. Many of them are GFS derived and you can do just as well by using GRIBs in whatever form you prefer.

When they provide worded forecasts as you often see in French, Spanish and Italian marinas, these, too, are direct from a computer model and, we have found, not very good. They very clearly have no human input.

They do not meet the needs of the GMDSS that forecasts should be broadcast in text form. A Shipping Forecast or an Inshore Waters forecast has to be brief enough so as not to put out a plethora of words that would be useless. It must highlight hazards. Essentially it has to be little more than a warning service – as the term GMDSS implies. Such forecasts can, currently, only be satisfactorily be written by a thinking human being.

In comparing the Météo Consult type of service or, indeed, any GRIB service with a GMDSS broadcast is to compare chalk with cheese.
 
Stoshak said:
I have noticed that the Inshore Forecast for the Channel Islands is consistently more detailed and informative than those for the rest of the UK.

Compare today's CI forecast with that for Selsey Bill to Lyme Regis

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/inshore_forecast.html#ChannelIslands

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/inshore_forecast.html#SelseyBilltoLymeRegis


Is it because it is produced locally, possibly by enthusiasts?
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Going back to the original query, I have just looked at the two links quoted. There seems little difference in the amount of detail. I think that Jersey Met has more latitude when there is more that could usefully be said.
 
franksingleton said:
Going back to the original query, I have just looked at the two links quoted. There seems little difference in the amount of detail. I think that Jersey Met has more latitude when there is more that could usefully be said.
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Thats todays forecast, on the day the OP posted the difference was marked with Jersey giving details as I recall of differing condition after midnight, so a more precise timeline, something I have not seen on other area forecasts.
 
Frank

I started this thread when we returned from two weeks in the CIs in early June.

The weather was very poor at that time, we were windbound in Jersey for a week. So I had plenty of time to study Met office and Jersey Met forecasts.

There was no doubt that the Jersey forecasts were consistently more informative and helpful than those of the Met Office. In fact I felt confident in planning our trips in accordance with them. I do not have the same level of confidence in the Met Office's frugal offerings.

It is time that the Met Office were subject to formal performance assessments in their safety critical functions. I have seen figures for return on capital and so forth, but no figures explaining accuracy of forecasts. Are they regulated in any way?

I notice that the latest examples you provide are very minimalist from Jersey. Have they been disciplined by our Met Office and made to come into line?
 
Stoshak said:
The weather was very poor at that time, we were windbound in Jersey for a week. So I had plenty of time to study Met office and Jersey Met forecasts.

..................

I notice that the latest examples you provide are very minimalist from Jersey. Have they been disciplined by our Met Office and made to come into line?
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Jersey Met is completely independent of the UK Met Office. They do their own thing taking guidance forecasts from the UK and France.

In my first post above, I tried to explain what I think is the reason for the different amount of detail. It is a combination of time made available by HMCG to read out the forecast, the cost of the Met Office to provide the service and the fact that the Met Office and HMCG have to provide forecasts for many areas all around the UK.

I have always had a high regard for Jersey Met and the Senior Met Officer was a longstanding friend. I helped select his successor. When in the area, which I have not been since 2000, I would always listen to them for the local area. But, I still stress that they are doing a different job, with different constraints. There are no other countries that I know of in Europe and the Med where you get the kind of detail that jersey sometimes provides.

If we sailors want a similar level of detail from the Met Office then the extra costs would have to be funded by the users. MCA will not have the funds.

My own approach to using forecasts, what I preach and do, is to use GRIBs plus UK and ECMWF charts for planning. I listen carefully to whichever inshore forecast is available. I use the VHF or the Internet texts thereof – my site has good fast links where available. I still look at GRIbs for the short term. I then use commonsense and experience.

Anybody wanting a tailored service should consider usin Simon Keeling's service.
 
Frank's comments have been very interesting. Regular visitors may be interested in a booklet 'Weather in Channel Island Waters' by one of the Jersey forecasters, Roger Thébault. It also deals with sea conditions. Just £3 when I discovered it a few years ago.
 
Roger Thébault is an old friend of mine. I helped choose his successor.

When I see posts such as above, I always feel that I should try to put the other side. In all probability I am the only person, apart from Simon Keeling, on YBW who has ever had to write a brief script for a weather forecast. I am , again almost certainly, the only person to have responsibility for shipping forecasts and gale warnings although I never wrote them. The technology of forecasting has changed since those days but the need to produce texts for broadcast in voice and text has not.

I usually try to offer some positive advice. If you really do think that the UK Met Office is not doing as well as it could, then why not collate, say, a month’s set of forecasts from jersey and the Met Office. If, say, Jersey gives more detail on over 50% of occasions then write to the MCA with your sample. MCA will take you seriously. They, on our behalf, are the paying customer.
 
I was somewhat surprised by this post but let it run.

With the greatest respect, Jersey forecasters are covering a small island and immediate sea area - which as Jersey residents they will know intimately.

The UK Met Office however has to cover an area hugely greater which no one person could ever know fully. Plus covering some 1,000+ miles south to north means that there could be a sunny high over Cornwall and a F10 lashing Shetland.

Frank and his former colleagues do the best they can within their means for the area they cover - so do the Jersey forecasters. But the tasks are not the same.

As stated, one should never rely on one source of information, and even then, use one's own interpretation of the information based on what's happening where you are.

Fair winds to all.
 
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