Affordable Weather Forecasts by Email

Created by webmaster. Last modified on 2002-08-19 00:50:59
Contributors: Brian Savage "Theta Volantis"
Topic: Weather

After cruising for several years, we have found the availability of weather forecasts around the world patchy. Some areas are well served by SSB weatherfax forecasts, by SSB voice forecasts or even by cruising nets. However for large areas of the Pacific we have been without any useful long-term forecasts. In ports we avidly study weather websites, looking for weather windows for the next trip, but wishing we had access to all that data while we were on passage.

We have had a satellite phone on board for the last few years, and felt there had to be a better way to get weather forecasts than just from SSB weatherfaxes, but weren't willing to spend a fortune on accessing web pages over our phone. On a recent shore based web-searching session we discovered www.buoyweather.com and realised that we could now have access to all that data by e-mail. Apart from being a pretty slick analysis of the NOAA wind and wave model output, what the BuoyWeather site also provides, for subscribers only, is a 5-day e-mailed forecast customised for your exact location. Some weather sites charge quite a lot of money for forecasts, but with BuoyWeather if you are prepared to invest $10 in advance, you get 100 e-mailed forecasts, sent about 5 minutes after each request. You can even set up an automatic forecast to be sent each day.

There are various e-mail formats; some are designed for character dependent systems like some SSB e-mail servers, or SatC where the charge is by character and the minimum information possible is transmitted. Others have a more relaxed layout, for e-mail servers where the number of characters transmitted is not an issue.

The fixed location forecast is not much use if you are on, or planning a passage, but by sending a set of 5 lat and longs for your daily estimated position, you will get back a 5 day passage forecast. The text forecasts are sent as the text in an e-mail, but if your e-mail system can handle attachments, you can ask for the forecasts in chart format. Again you can request any period up to 120 hours ahead.

Anyone interested is urged to sign up. The more use the site gets, the better it will get for all sailors. The plan is to continue to add features in the future, such as downloading GRIB files (the data files output by weather models) so you can interpret the data on your own computer. Also, soon more parameters will be added, such as sea temperature, surface pressure and so on.