Weather reports

[BobFord]

I would appreciate advice on sourcing weather reports. Coastal Australia,there are many areas on the coast , especially Swains and Northern Australia where Telstra 4 G drops out. I plan to invest in a system to be able to receive BOM daily. What is the best option ?

[barnakiel]

Have you looked at Inmarsat Broadband?

I used it some time ago, it was very good back then.

b.

[chuckr]

Try using the gribs from NOAA models and guidance -- world wide - a bit big but you can get the idea --
if you have ssb use the gribs for the area you want.

[barnakiel]

US NOAA grib is nowhere as good as BOM local stuff.

Does BOM distribute their radiofax imagery via email request, as NOAA does? It is not as descriptive as BOM graphic site on the web but still very very fine to get the broad picture.

b.

[Sailor_Hutch]

I'm just getting into this myself, but I've picked up on a couple items in my searching. Correct me if I'm wrong ...

I think the gribs that come down from zygrib are very reduced because the sailmail is limited to very small files. Otherwise, they would contain much more info ... since some of NOAA's stuff actually is BOM AFAIK...

The original NOAA grib2 files and BOM files are often very large in size, like even 100MB, which is a significant little chunk even for some wifi connections. The NOAA no longer distributes the original (smaller) grib1 files. So, some kind of conversion and reduction is needed for sailmail. I think zYgrib does this, but am not sure. Naturally, there will be a ton of additional info in the bigger original grib2 files. If you want to analyze the latter, I've come across some good programs for doing it: CDO (Climate Data), which is available in an installer package for various platforms, gRaDs, a similar program, and various R-cran (statistics) programs if you're familiar with that system.

Like I said, I'm just getting my toes wet here, so feel free to add your own knowledge, or correct it ...

[Sailor_Hutch]

Warning: Weather NOOB disclosure!

In my meanderings around the net, I seem to have collected the idea that there's a lot of sharing between the various meteorological sources, and quite a bit of it ends up being in NOAA files (and vice-versa). On one page, I saw listed about a dozen different meteorological sources for NOAA/NCEP, with some of them being commercial. The large 50-100MB grib2 files can be sliced and diced to a very fine level in the R stats package, as this guy shows on his blog:

NCEP Global Forecast System | Biospherica

He first converts the Grib2 files to NetCDF format, and goes from there ...

[casablanca]

I bought on eBay a cheap portable multi band receiver. You will need HF SSB to receive the BOM scheduled reports.


Bob
CASABLANCA L420 #86

[BobFord]

Comments appreciated.

I agree that Inmarsat is reliable but can be v. exey !

Trying to avoid HF but it certainly seems to provide reliable Vox.

[barnakiel]

I would stick to sat data where Inmarsat is not an option. Something like Iridium Open Port or anything competing.

If I were bound to HF, I would stay with radiofax only - SSB receivers are next to free and nearly everyone today has a PC, tablet or other device to mount radiofax software.

BOM radiofax was superb when we sailed your waters BUT reception is better well offshore than inshore.

b.

[nickolson]

Have a look at PredictWind

In particular on that page you will see a link to the Offshore App and secondly Iridium GO. You can get gribs files for your area and control the size from 4 weather models pwg, pwc, gfs (noaa), cmc.

Disclaimer. I work for them