Met Office Inshore out of line?

[FinesseChris]

Hi everyone

Compare Met Office Inshore with Accuweather, Metcheck & XCWeather for tomorrow, 31/5/07, Solent. All latter 3 give S F3/4. Met Office gives F 5 or 6, 3 later. They all agree on direction; S.

Is the 'official' Met Office adding a bit to be safe? Or are they talking about S of Wight not Solent?

As we plan to exit Chi at HW tomorrow we are quite involved in these nuances.!!

Chris

 

[bluedragon]

Windguru's forecast maps are showing an area of F5 winds in mid-channel for most of tomorrow, but around F3 closer to the shores of IoW and Cherbourg area. Hope that helps...

 

[jamesjermain]

Met Office inshore forecast will be for Lyme Regis to Selsey Bill so will inlcude a lot of quite open water, including Portland Bill, St Catherine's Point and Selsey Bill itself, where wind strengths generally are higher. The Solent is usually an 'F' or two lower than the open sea although a westerly can funnel through the western Solent, particularly if bolstered by a sea breeze, and be stronger than winds beyond the Needles.

 

[Blue5]

The inshore Met Office Forecast is for up to 12 miles offshore. Met Office do generally give an accurate forecast but you do need to take account of local forecasts. I tend to think IMHO XC weather are always a few knots light and give no forecasting for gusts.

 

[Evadne]

"inshore" waters forecast is also for up to 12 miles offshore. FWIW Theyr largely agrees with the Met office lower limits, although they have been underpredicting the wind strengths this year..

 

[bluedragon]

I like XC Weather for actual data, but their forecast does use the GFS model I believe, which does seem to err on the low side of things. Actually I don't know of anywhere that forecasts gusts?? But if Windguru or the Met Office (or any of the station reports) show say a F5, I'll expect gusts to F6 at least...and that usually proves to be the case...

 

[ChrisE]

So it's gusts you're wanting...

Here you are.

 

[Cornishman]

[ QUOTE ]
Is the 'official' Met Office adding a bit to be safe?

[/ QUOTE ]

That is a dangerous assumption. We had this discussion here a year or more ago and the Met Office was quite adamant that do not add a force or two to be on the safe side. I would treat XC with caution - after all, they reported a wind in excess of 100 knots at Seven Stones only last week when everywhere else nearby was about 10 to 15 knots if memory serves me correctly.!

 

[simonjk]

hi Guys,

I'm not forecasting today and am away from the charts. However, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS go with theforecast which has been seen and ammended by a human! The met ffice forecast will have been quality controlled, the others have not. The Met Office will be showing the highestspeed they exect in the area.

See the dscussion of the weekends low for more on the use of computer forecasts.

Simon

 

[bluedragon]

[ QUOTE ]
So it's gusts you're wanting...

Here you are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I'll have another look at this, but last year when I tried to use it, it was a complete joke and definitely seemed to be generated by machine, not human!! I remember sunny days with settled high pressure F2-3 max and 30 knot gusts being forecast. It was useless! I'd be interested to know if anybody has a positive opinion of this BBC service, as in theory it looks like what we all want....