Meteo France weather forecasts for the Atlantic

Bajansailor

Bajansailor

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I might be crewing on a boat delivery leaving from here in 2 weeks time bound for the UK via the Azores, and I am currently researching weather info.
This boat does not have an SSB, but hopefully she will have a Sat-phone for receiving / sending emails - if I am not going (I am currently the stand by crew) I shall be the shore support, supplying the crew with weather info by email.

Radio France International (http://www.rfi.fr/ ) used to (still do?) broadcast a daily weather forecast for the North Atlantic which was (is) excellent - however we won't be able to receive it without an SSB receiver as a minimum.

Meteo France have a chart here http://marine.meteofrance.com/content/2008/7/5136-43.jpg showing the co-ordinates of the various different regions for the weather forecast.

And here is the forecast for Metarea 2 - http://marine.meteofrance.com/marin...LET.path=marinegrandlargebulletin/GDLG_METAII - but this only goes as far west as the Azores.

I think that Metarea 1 includes the western sections such as Alizes Ouest, Colorado and the Antilles, but I cannot find a forecast anywhere on the Meteo France site for these areas.
Am I just rather dense, re not being able to find it?
I am sure it must be there, somewhere - or have they really had to cut back in the range of their forecasts?
 
We sailed back from the azores last year and were able to pick up the meteo france north atlantic forecast on our little roberts SW radio, £40, every day. I think it was 11.40 utc but you would have to check. It was, of course, in french but we recorded it on our mobile phone and then translated at our leisure. We did have an SSB receiver but the roberts was better, especialy when I held the arial against the mizen mast.
 
Are you sailing towards the UK from the Caribbean or the Azores ?

For voice bulletins anyway, the RFI weather bulletin on 6175 or 15300 at 1130UTC has been interrupted since jan this year.

Now as text bulletins you have Metarea IV (voice broadcast from the US, but you can request them by email too) which covers all atlantic ocean west of Metarea II.
Metarea II of course available through email too.


The there is all the rest, GRIBs, weatherfax, etc...




*** Edit

sorry I have just seen your answer to my message on the other thread,
then yes if you can request files through email my answer above is more or less correct about Metarea IV etc..

I have a patchy internet cafe at the moment, though I will be home the day after tomorrow for a short week, we cen get in touch then and we can share the info we have.

cheers
 
Last edited:
again (sorry bad internet connection),

for Metarea IV (Atlantic west of Metarea II) look for:

US Atlantic High Seas Forecast

they are split into two wide areas, from 7N to 31N, and North from 31N, example here

http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/NFDHSFAT1.shtml


you can request them through saildocs if you use it (or with any email system)

try sending a mail to query@saildocs.com with this text in the message body (write anything oyu want in the subject line)

send http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/raw/fz/fznt01.kwbc.hsf.at1.txt

***edit: the message automatically highlights the link, but it need not to be so, just copy the text, word "send", then one space then the link**



wait a few minutes then check your email again and you will find the text bulletin
 
Hi Martin and Roberto,

Greetings from sunny Sicily. Does this mean there are no cross Atlantic voice bulletins of any kind? RFI was the last one I was aware of...

Yours aye

Stephen:eek:
 
fliti said:
Hi Martin and Roberto,

Greetings from sunny Sicily. Does this mean there are no cross Atlantic voice bulletins of any kind? RFI was the last one I was aware of...

Yours aye

Stephen:eek:
Click to expand...

Meteo France prepared a special bulletin for RFI, which since jan 1st does not exist any more (budget cuts..), it was the only one covering the whole Atlantic.

Now, one can listen to Metarea IV (west atlantic) "high seas" voice bulletins from the US, they are broadcast from their Chesapeake and New Orleans radio stations at 0515, 1115, 1715, 2315 (frequencies can be found in the National Weather service site), look I have them here 4426, 6501, 8764, 4316, 8502, 12788, 13089, 17314
*NOTE* *not* all frequencies are used every time, depending on which time of the day is the broadcast some of them are not used.

For the Metarea II bulletin (east Atlantic), a voice bulletin is broadcast every day at 0930 from Monaco Radio (in french and sometimes in english) on 4363, 8728, 13146, 17260 kHz.
They have a very powerful station I could hear it even from Brazil like if it was a VHF bulletin (I had to cross back the ITCZ and they give its position at the beginning of the bulletin). Forecast os for 24 hours only, but they give a 48h outlook if there any gale warnings or threats.
All times UTC.

These two should be available over all the Atlantic, nearer to shore there are broadcasts on the 2MHz band from various stations but I personally have never bothered

Hope this helps
 
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