I have a water resistant Radio Shack weather radio in bright yellow with an alarm feature on it for emergency broadcast advisories. The radio resides on the coffee table in my living room. Range is great in the middle of Manhattan and the water resistance aspect will come in handy were I to spill a Cuba Libre on it. It also makes an interesting conversation piece allowed by my long suffering wife who has tolerated its jarring effect on interior decoration. I used to carry a weather radio in a waterproof bag for day trips and local camping trips. Plain ole Radio Shack $20 thing. It worked well enough locally. Now that I have the VHF, I don't bother with the dedicated weather radio. The reason I have the bright yellow one in the living room is that I like to listen to it regularly particularly in the days leading up to a planned paddling jaunt. By listening regularly, I have spotted patterns that affect both the athmospheric weather and likely sea conditions. Earlier this year I was following the weather carefully leading up to a Manhattan shoreline trip I organized prior to a group of us going to see the Shackleton exhibit. The morning of the trip dawned with fog and rain but I sensed an opening was highly likely. I got a cellphone call from Paddlewisers Bob and Joan Volin who were driving down from north of the city in pouring rain wondering if I was calling it off. Also from Bill Leonhardt (another PaddleWise regular) who was coming in from Long Island and calling from a car while sheets of rain pelting his windshield. I told them to keep coming, that conditions would be favorable by the time we hit the water. Sure enough, the rain stopped and the fog lifted enough to make things visible while still giving us a cozy, mysterious feel on the water. My soothsayer act was only made possible by constant monitoring and being able to identify those subtle shifts in what is being said on the weather radio; just listening to it that morning would have told me nothing in effect. The Volins and Leonhardts probably thought I was some sort of weather god though. :-) Now I also have my web page opener set for local weather and the quick bar above is bookmarked for getting individually the local marine forecast and a photo and reading of weather conditions at the Ambrose Light which tells me sea conditions and water temperatures. For those who want to do something similar, I got the webpage of general local weather from http://www.dogpile.com which has a button somewhere to get your local weather (it's a nice graphic with moon phases, etc.). The marine forecast and the photo and sea conditions at my nearest marine indicator (the Ambrose Light out at the mouth of NYC's lower bay) come from http://www.nws.fsu/B which lead to a marine forecast and the buoy reports. I can't wait to impress the Volins and Leonhardts with my wealth of info the next time we paddle together! :-) ralph -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Dec 28 1999 - 07:52:21 PST
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