How to get weather forecasts whilst offshore?

[Cherod]

Originally Posted by Luther

I also use Garmin Inreach. It allows you to enter the coordinates for a specific location, not just your actual location. At sea I enter coordinates for 100 miles ahead of current location. Pretty basic but just wanted to point out that it's not restricted to current location.

and what is the price of that ?

[Snore]

I just invested in a go for deliveries and firmly feel it was the smartest move I ever made.

PW has the full European model, the model costs them big bucks- hence the fees.

Luck GRIB has the public model.

I am still testing download with the small stubby antenna and have a delivery next week on a SABA with a mast mount. It should be interesting to see how the different antennas work.

Of course the low-budget is emailing grib requests and viewing them on a free viewer. Play with the options at home and see what you like.

Word of caution- big gribs are easy getting on land internet. Files above 45 kB are a bear to download on a GO.

Bill

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Auspicious

Sure - you can get the .gif and .tiff NOAA OPC WX products from Saildocs or directly from NOAA over ftpmail using Iridium GO!. They are not small. Small is what gribs are good at.

Lee had a stroke early this year. Last I heard from him he had moved to a nursing facility (between hospital and home). Thanks for reminding me that I'm overdue to call his wife and check in.

Sorry to hear about Lee.

Are you sure about file size? A .tiff of the NE Pacific 48 hour surface forecast is 30 KB. Depending on the resolution and parameters a grib file is larger.

[Snore]

Originally Posted by jackdale

Sorry to hear about Lee.



Are you sure about file size? A .tiff of the NE Pacific 48 hour surface forecast is 30 KB. Depending on the resolution and parameters a grib file is larger.

The one advantage of LG is you can put a large area GRIVB file in LuckGrib and then get a close-in European model of the weather in the area that you’re going through.

[mvweebles]

Jackdale - thanks for the update on Lee Chesneau. I wish it was better news. If appropriate, please thank him or his wife. Over a 5-year period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I spent a out 200 days/year traversing the pacific coast. I got to know the forecasters by their notes and style on WxFax - each had a signature block of who did the forecast . I met Lee several times but never told him how important his work was (and of course his colleagues). I hope they understood what a relief it was to hear the WxFax start scrolling with their work.

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by jackdale

Are you sure about file size? A .tiff of the NE Pacific 48 hour surface forecast is 30 KB. Depending on the resolution and parameters a grib file is larger.

The current 48 hr surface forecast .tiff is 32 kB - machts nicht. The ten products I care about (surface analysis; 24, 48, 96 hour surface forecasts; 24, 48, 96 hour wind & wave forecasts; 24, 48, 96 hour 500 mb charts) end up around between 300 and 350 kB. Again, not the end of the world but add up unless the user chooses the unlimited data plan. You pays your money and takes your choice.

One can absolutely do that over the GO! or most other satellite systems. The upside is that if you can connect at all you'll get Internet quality pictures. The alternative of weather fax is subject to propagation and noise. Neither is perfect. My experience tilts toward a preference for weather fax.

Originally Posted by mvweebles

thanks for the update on Lee Chesneau. I wish it was better news. If appropriate, please thank him or his wife. Over a 5-year period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I spent a out 200 days/year traversing the pacific coast. I got to know the forecasters by their notes and style on WxFax - each had a signature block of who did the forecast . I met Lee several times but never told him how important his work was (and of course his colleagues). I hope they understood what a relief it was to hear the WxFax start scrolling with their work.

Many of those of us who count ourselves as Lee's friends have told him how important his countributions have been to cruisers. He knows. I'll tell him there is yet another holding up their hand.

One of the really cool things about synoptic charts, regardless of how you get them on board, is the personal accountability. A forecaster has his or her name on the charts. Some are better than others, some are more conservative about what they show. Sometimes you get more information from yesterday's 48 than today's 24. You always get good information by comparing those - differences of substance indicates instability in the atmosphere that carries its own information. You learn that sort of thing at Lee's knee.

[crayiii]

I use sailmail through a iridium go! To download gribs as well as other data. My one gripe with sailmail is the file size limitation they have. While I understand why it's there for downloading via ssb, I really wish the limit would be increased for the iridium go.

For example, I miss getting this file when away from the internet https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tafb/USA_00Z.gif

I can still download it pretty fast through the iridium app on the iPad but it's another step that u wish weren't necessary.

[fxykty]

Are there any sources for synoptic charts for the Southern Hemisphere? I’m in the SW Pacific and I sure wish NOAA was interested as we don’t have anything like the coverages of the N Pacific and N Atlantic Oceans.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Are there any sources for synoptic charts for the Southern Hemisphere?

Both NZ and OZ have done them . . . a quick google had this as the first hit

https://www.metservice.com/maps-rada...-low-bandwidth

I suspect a bit more search would find nicer ones.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

Both NZ and OZ have done them . . . a quick google had this as the first hit

https://www.metservice.com/maps-rada...-low-bandwidth

I suspect a bit more search would find nicer ones.

Thank you, I know about them. But even as low bandwidth this is not retrievable by our sat phone connection. On a recent passage we had this page sent to us daily via email by a friend. Still pretty big. Oh well, that’s all we got here.

[Breaking Waves]

You ofc may already have tried this. ... but if not ....

I often get ice maps in picture format.

My shore contact (wife usually) pulls the ice chart from the met service website and puts it into a graphics program which has a variable compression slider - she then compresses it until real detail is being lost (and then backs off one notch). That compresses the s**t out of it, much smaller file (like 10 to 20% of original file size).

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

You ofc may already have tried this. ... but if not ....

I often get ice maps in picture format.

My shore contact (wife usually) pulls the ice chart from the met service website and puts it into a graphics program which has a variable compression slider - she then compresses it until real detail is being lost (and then backs off one notch). That compresses the s**t out of it, much smaller file (like 10 to 20% of original file size).

Getting a bit geeky, but there's a free service which will run python code online,
https://www.pythonanywhere.com, here you can run a little code once a day on a timer. For dockhead on his last Greenland trip i had some set up to go to a website, find whatever the ice map images qre that day, shrink them a bit then save with a specific filename so they were dowoadable over sat phone. That script is prob still saved online if anyone wants to tweak it.

[Amapola]

Our most used weather product is SiriusXM Weather.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by conachair

Getting a bit geeky, but there's a free service which will run python code online,
https://www.pythonanywhere.com, here you can run a little code once a day on a timer. For dockhead on his last Greenland trip i had some set up to go to a website, find whatever the ice map images qre that day, shrink them a bit then save with a specific filename so they were dowoadable over sat phone. That script is prob still saved online if anyone wants to tweak it.

BTW . . . That was very kind of you and I'm sure was very helpful for DH and that he was very grateful. I'm not a luddite, but am verging on 'ok boomer' when thinking about python on a timer

I'm usually only interested in a small section of the ice charts, so the biggest compression gain for me is the shore contact snipping out that little bit. It would be a little harder but I suppose you could code that 'snipping' from a request or from a tracker position.

[hpeer]

FWIW
We have SSB and an Iridium phone. I use one or the other to contact Sailmail and download a GRIB.

I also use, and recommend, WeatherTrack. Haven’t figured out how to open Sailmail gribs in it yet.