Accuracy of Passage Weather ?

[Sabbatical II]

I've heard of people using the "Passage Weather" site for worldwide weather information. While it seems to be generally pretty good, from time to time I have found it to be very innacurate.

Currently Cyclone "Heidi" is crossing the coast of North West Australia. On the TV news they are reporting winds of 70 knots. Passage Weather is reporting no more than 20 - 25 knots. Obviously from the TV footage, the TV report is the more accurate.

Has anyone else found this site to be a reliable source of weather information?

[Vyndance]

Overall it's pretty close. You get what you pay for and more!

[44'cruisingcat]

So far I haven't found ANY source for reliably accurate weather forecasts.

What's worse, often you'll look in half a dozen sites, and find half a dozen different forecasts. Which to believe? And sometimes they're ALL wrong!

[dennisjay]

I've used PassageWeather.com on the east coast of the U.S. and in the Bahamas and found it to be generally reliable. However, I never rely on a single source for weather. No service is accurate 100% of the time.

[svHyLyte]

Passage Weather essentially recasts weather projections by various governmental meterology agencies. Depending upon one's location, the projections can be more or less accurate depending upon the time period of forecast. FOr us here in South Florida, the projections are based upon the GFS and NAM models and tend to be very good for several days although reliability decreases depending upon lead time. Within 24-48-72 hours, however, the models seem to be very reliable.

FWIW...

[Jim Cate]

G'Day Greg,

As stated above, PW is based on grib data produced by various met offices. While gribs are useful, their standard disclaimer notes that they have some known problems. These include not responding well to small disturbances (such as Heidi or other cyclones), not including frontal conditions, and not folding in geographical influences (land/sea breezes, mountain ranges etc).

For many, gribs are kinda seductive! When displayed on your computer screen, the one for next week looks just as authoritative as the one for tomorrow, and it is easy to place excess confidence in it. We view them as indicative of trends, but not of accurate wind/sea predictions, especially when projected more than a day or two. Still, they are helpful, and are easily accessed even when at sea or in the woop-woop.

On another subject: any idea of launch date yet?

Cheers,

Jim

[Sabbatical II]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

G'Day Greg,

As stated above, PW is based on grib data produced by various met offices. While gribs are useful, their standard disclaimer notes that they have some known problems. These include not responding well to small disturbances (such as Heidi or other cyclones), not including frontal conditions, and not folding in geographical influences (land/sea breezes, mountain ranges etc).

For many, gribs are kinda seductive! When displayed on your computer screen, the one for next week looks just as authoritative as the one for tomorrow, and it is easy to place excess confidence in it. We view them as indicative of trends, but not of accurate wind/sea predictions, especially when projected more than a day or two. Still, they are helpful, and are easily accessed even when at sea or in the woop-woop.

On another subject: any idea of launch date yet?

Cheers,

Jim

Hi Jim

Glad to see your back on the water and thanks for your opinion on PW. Unfortunately launch date still looks to be about 2 months away, and I'm not betting that there won't be further delays. I've learn't not to stress over it. When you head north again we'll probably have a boat to show you. Keep safe!

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Eleebana

I've heard of people using the "Passage Weather" site for worldwide weather information. While it seems to be generally pretty good, from time to time I have found it to be very innacurate.

Currently Cyclone "Heidi" is crossing the coast of North West Australia. On the TV news they are reporting winds of 70 knots. Passage Weather is reporting no more than 20 - 25 knots. Obviously from the TV footage, the TV report is the more accurate.

Has anyone else found this site to be a reliable source of weather information?

Pretty sure that nearly if not all the free ones are based on the GFS computer model. Doesn't matter too much which one you look at, chances are the data comes from the same place.

Mother of all forecast links here

I prefer synoptics to gribs generally, better "big picture" of what's going on.