Weather

Weather is obviously extremely critical to sailing. The links here are place's I've found useful over the years.

GRIB.US

This website is a good place to download grib files (basic wind information). They have an application that you download an allows you to download grib data for a given area. It will then display the data and allow you to see wind directions and pressure bars predicated for up to a week.

One nice trick is to load the grib data into OpenCPN, you can then overlay current and predicted wind directions on top of marine maps.

Sailflow

Lots of weather stations with 7 day forecasts as well as real time information. Sailflow is the sailor biased take on WindAlert.

Here's their widget for Point Loma:

 

And here's one for Oceanside:

SwellWatch

I've been using SwellWatch, or its previous incarnation WetSand for years for surf information and also for a longer term weather outlook. The report written by Nathan Cool is excellent, and something I've come to rely on. The interactive map allows you to look at swell height, direction, period and also wind and gives you  up to seven days of forecast with titbits of information on what Nathan is thinking about when making his predictions. Obviously biased towards surf but good information.

NOAA Marine Weather

NOAA is obviously a great source of information but I'll admit to finding it hard to navigate. Once you've found good information make sure you either bookmark it or know how to get back there!

Here's a hourly breakdown of the next 24 hours between SD and Oceanbeach

PredictWind

Direct competitor to sailflow.com I like predictwind's clean interface. The quality of the reports for Oceanside and San Diego seem comparable to sailflow.com from what I've seen with sailflow. The tendency seems to be for sailflow to underpredict our typical seabreeze and predictwind to over predict. On lighter days where the offshores and onshores are fighting it out they both over predict but sailflow is closer and on stronger days predictwind might have the edge. Going to keep using both!

SCOOS surface currents

This shows very recent current data. The interface is a bit clunky but interesting data. It's possible to download kmls and plug into google earth, I'm interested in mining this data for routing calculations...

One thing worth noting is that currents can switch around suprisingly quickly. A couple of times I've looked at this pre race to help with tactics and encountered something quite different on the water, the couple of times I've doubled back to see what was recorded it has agreed with my on the water observation.

Useful links on weather behaviors

• Sea breezes - I'm still wrapping my mind about the Coriolis effect!