Geoff Schultz wrote:

Skip,

I don't know which NOAA forecasts you keep talking about, but unless you're
looking at the coastal forecasts, what you see over weatherfax is for off-
shore and can't be applied to the ICW or along the coast.

When I do the weather for the Chesapeake using NOAA (which certainly
DOES apply to that area), I often find that their forecasts are wrong,
either in wind direction or wind intensity and sometimes both.

The thing that you have to do it to really understand what the
forecasts are based on, and that takes a bit of time. In the
beginning even though I had the advantage of having been a science
teacher where I taught middle school students about the weather, I
made lots of mistakes.

In our case, I was the one doing the planning for weather (leaving
running the boat systems to Bob).

When we were in the Bahamas, there was a weather net each morning -
one for the ham radio people, and then one for the rest of us. Each
person reported in listing all the parameters currently at their
station - cloud type, percent cloud cover, wind direction, wind speed,
gusts, temperature (air and water), barometer reading and movement,
etc. I would write down what each person said, and eventually started
giving my own reports. I was able to follow the fronts across the
area by listening to what people were reporting.

I found that listening to Herb's forecasts (and you have to listen to
whatever he says to everyone and have a map - either in your head or
in front of you - to 'get' why he is saying will happen and why)
helped me quite a bit. He gets the forecasts from the various
entities and makes his own assessment of what is going to happen. He's
VERY good about predicting, and when he disagrees with what the models
are saying, he's usually right.

I developed IMHO a good grasp of what weather systems were actually
likely to do. And I'm really interested in the weather and think
about it quite a bit - even when I'm not on the boat.

So now when I listen to the NOAA forecast, I listen ALSO to the
weather observations from around the area with a map in my head as to
what the wind etc actually IS at all the points around me on the map.
I listen or look at such other information as I have available, such
as the Weather Channel on TV and the local TV weather and web based
weather systems. Then I make my own decisions about what I think will
happen.

Skip just needs more experience at the weather thing.

I'm just hoping that the little throw-away phrase is more something
about money rather than health.