South Pacific Weather Sources

As promised, here are the sources we intend to use on our journey across the South Pacific.

INTERNET: Internet resources will be available via 3G and WiFi before our departure and via our satellite FB150 when underway.

US Navy (www.fnmoc.navy.mil)

Tropical/Oceania Surface Sreamline Analysis

and precipitation analysis.

NOAA (aviationweather.gov/obs/sat/intl)

Area F Visible Satellite

New Zealand Metvu (metvu.com)
Forecast Charts Southwest Pacific NZ – Fiji – These charts are available in various time increments up to 7 days.

The above were all taken from the sites for the same time period. Interesting as to how well they all depict the same weather freatures.

SINGLE SIDE BAND HF RADIO:

Our single sideband radio is connected to a Pactor modem which is utilized to send and recieve emails and decode weather information from a variety of sources. More is available on this in our posts on communicationd and Iron Lady’s office.

VIA SAILMAIL:

Using the Sailmail program Viewfax. Many of the available sources are preprogrammed and requesting the information is a simple matter of selecting the source from a dropdown list and sending a short email to request the data. The data is returned via email over the SSB radio. The same information can be requested via the internet thru the Sailmail program as well when internet service is available.

Gribs: – Gribs are binary files that encode weather data. They can be requested over various time periods (ie 4 days) at various intervals (ie 12 or 24 hours) for various items (ie surface pressure, wind direction and strength, wave heights, rain and surface weather features). The area of interest is user selectable by drawing a rectangle on a map. Scanning your mouse over the GRIB displays data for the location of the mouse in text format. This is a current GRIB for the same time period as above.

NADI Fleetcode: Surface Charts which are sent in Morse format and can be decoded in to graphical surface charts using Physplot.

Pacific High Seas Forecast: – South Pacific from 0-25S, 120W – 160E Text Forecast

Offshore French Polynesia forecast: In text format in French

Offshore Pacific NADI Sopac: from Fiji Metservice in text

(These last four are not shown in the interest of brevity)

VIA SSB WEATHER FAX:

Weather FAX is the equivalent of receiving a regular FAX except via our SSB radio.

NOAA Hawaii: 30 S to 30 N Surface Forecast

New Zealand Metservice:

Finally, various private weather forecasters offer weather forecasting and routing for offshore voyagers on a fee basis.

That’s pretty much the lineup. As you can see there is plenty of stuff to acquire and look at. From our voyages over the last few years we have discovered that even using all of them doesn’t guarantee that nasty weather (both forecast and unforeseen) won’t be encountered. The good news for the ocean voyager is that both the availability and accuracy of weather forecasts is much better then just a few years ago.