Weather routing apps and sites

[davethedog]

Morning,

A quick question (that I hope does not descend into arguing), what do people in the Med use for any weather routing etc?

Cheers

DTD

 

[De.windhoos]

WindyTV and for inshore Windfinder.
Also downloading grib files to use in OpenCPN.

 

[Cariadco]

I've found Windfinder to be pretty good.

 

[Ric]

If you just want a good representation of winds in the Med, then use the ECMWF or AROME models on the excellent windy.tv website. Ignore the GFS model on the same site - it is hopeless for the Med - it is a global model that does not take into account the peculiarities of the Med. The NEMS model is good for areas around high relief - I find it better local to Cap Corse for example.

For weather routing - well there is not really much need for that in the Med as the distances are so short. Whatever you do in a typical 100-200m passage you are not going to benefit much from computer modelling because the variables in the Med are so unpredictable that even the most sophisticated models are not going to make a reliable difference. The one exception to this is in departure planning. I have found that it is really quite useful - assuming you have no time constraints - to be able to look ahead over the next 4-5 days to find the best slot to depart on a passage to find the most comfortable time to depart where you are going to be getting most of the passage in nice conditions. The only app that I have found that is quite good for this is Predictwind. It has nice apps for iPad and Mac. It is quite pricey however, though I still end up buying a three month subscription every summer.

I have tried Avalon too. It does run on iPad but I really dislike the clunky Andrex interface, and crucially for me it does not have departure planning.

 

[sailaboutvic]

What's all this weather routing all about ?
Windy, winderfinder, wind guru and so on , are ok to use. As secondary back up , we use local area forecast as are first port of call , Italy lemma,Greece Poseidon, Croatia DHNZ, Malta airport weather , France combines of meteomer Lemma .
We also take into account of one or two other forecaster and if they are nearly all the same you can almost say that's what you going to get , if They are all different , it's vans body guess ,
We only really got caught out three times doing it this way .once was last year when four different forecaster give us no more then a F5 it ended up with us sailing 35 nm in winds touching 42kts .
Look at it another way , if you was sailing in the North Sea , would you be looking at a forecaster from the US ?

 

[nortada]

I've found Windfinder to be pretty good.

In the Bay of Cadiz and The Straits (OK - I know this is the Atlantic), Windfinder tends to underestimate wind speed and out to the west weather can come through a couple of hours early (good when you are waiting for a clearance) but otherwise very accurate.

 

[GHA]

Ignore the GFS model on the same site - it is hopeless for the Med - it is a global model that does not take into account the peculiarities of the Med. .

After spending a few minutes looking at a few dozen random locations on Windy there actually seems to be not a great deal in it between the models.... Maybe round some headlands but none of the models cope on such small scale local effects very well, local knowledge & check the cruising guides can be a much more accurate place to look for that.

Windy is great for comparing the output from the different models and click on a live feed you can compare 5 days forecast against actual, useful for flagging up local effects.

 

[BigJoe]

Passage Weather is good for swell predictions, handy for picking a good anchorage