On Jul 28, 10:41*am, wrote:
...
I've heard others say the same thing, but the truth is, it matters
where you sail. In the Long Island Sound and surrounding area, NOAA
marine forecasts are worthless. After years of checking 5 different
forecasts including NOAA whenever I needed one, I finally determined
that Accuweather is the most reliable forecaster in my area. I don't
know the reason, but that's the situation here.

Don't get me wrong. My first point was that weather forecasts are not
very reliable and, even if they come in slick digital packages, need
to be checked against the reality of conditions around you. The
argument I was trying to make in the post you replied to was that if
the forecast is bad near shore it will probably be worse offshore all
else being equal. Here in the Pacific doing my own routing and
helping others with theirs my experiences with NOAA's ocean forecasts
and wx faxes has not been good. One nice feature of NOAA forecasts is
that they are signed by the forecaster and I have found that some
forecasters are better than others and some are more interested in
marine weather than others. Reading the "discussion" can provide a
feel for the local abilities and bents. Some of the NOAA guys do way
worse on average than the models. If you are in one of those places
and it matters to you I'd suggest making an effort to get meso scale
model data, particularly NAM.

FWIW, I get my NAM charts from buoyweather.com (I find the slp/rain
chart very useful). I think it's worth the subscription fee. You can
get the data in lots of wrappers for free from NOAA but it is based on
an LC projection so it doesn't work well with my viewer or with the
saildocs chopper. I get COAMPS free from saildocs. I find it a
little less good on average than NAM and the Navy doesn't put COAMPS
out when they are using their computers for other things so it isn't
always available.

Anyway, my motivation for all this typing is that every year I hear
the new guys getting all excited about their GRIBs and so on at the
start of the voyaging season only to hear them complain bitterly when
it turns out that the GRIBs are actually less accurate than the local
wx products they've been dising for years. Yes, every year the wx
forecasting seems to get a bit better but it is a long way from
reliable and it is important to be skeptical and keep a weather eye
open. It sounded to me like Skip was pretty excited about all his new
wx inputs, and I'm glad he's got them, but I wanted to point out that,
regardless of how much they cost or how pretty the charts, they need
to be looked as the very fallible things they are.

-- Tom.