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November 12th - Becalmed, bothered and bewildered (another riff on another song) and other last-ditch efforts
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. |
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