RE: [Paddlewise] Weather

Hi All

Enjoying this weather thread ..... Seems to me that you new world folks are
spoilt for choice with weather gizmos. Hereabouts there are a few
specialised pay and listen forecasting services, the coast guard, and the
familiar and reassuring met office shipping and inshore forecasts, but most
forecasts are little more use for paddling than looking at the chart, buoy
data, and out the window yourself.

A few years ago I occasionally used to go climbing with an Australian
meteorologist. His field at the time was forecasting wave heights for the
north sea offshore oil industry, and I'll tell you I used to get some handy
forecasts then :-). It was interesting to hear how forecasts for different
media were compiled - want to brief Texaco, Shell, Philips, Mobil etc on
wave height at platform 59º60'N  1º9'W in seven days to the nearest X cm
with Y probability? - then recruit the services of  a network of 100 or so
buoys and weather stations and several Crays to run the models. Want to know
the weather tomorrow for the local news media?- get someone to look out the
window and glance at the chart before selecting the recyclable
sentences..... you get what you pay for.

Apparently a good statistic  is that there is a 50% chance that the weather
tomorrow will be the same as it is today :-) So if you hear a forecast like
'there will be a 50% chance of rain tomorrow', you know  'It might rain, or
it might not', and in these parts it will be an absolutely spot on forecast
for at least 364 days a year :-)

Cheers

Colin Calder
57º19'N  2º10'W

'The sun always shines in Chile Chico'



***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List
Submissions:     paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
Subscriptions:   paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net
Website:         http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/
***************************************************************************