Improved UK Marine Weather Services

HMCG Revisions

Met Office Website

BBC Radio 4

Using the Internet

Using the Internet

Summary

UK HMCG  Revised procedures.

In December 2005, HMCG proposed some very significant changes to the broadcasting of MSI on VHF. These have been discussed by the RYA and CYCC mainly, but by no means entirely, with representatives of CYCC member clubs. Wider discussion was not feasible in view of the need to keep up the momentum and because we believed that the HMCG should be encouraged in its aims to give a substantially improved service. The CYCC

member clubs and associations represent a very broad spectrum of British Isles leisure sailors with much valuable collective experience.

Changes will take place on 1 February, 2007. My page on VHF schedules has been amended accordingly.

In summary form, the HMCG will implement the following -

• VHF (and MF) weather information will be broadcast every three hours instead of every four hours, i.e. eight instead of six times daily.

•  The daily forecast cycle will start at 0710 LT with updates or repeats three hourly until the start of the following daily cycle. 

• Full new inshore waters 24 hour forecasts plus 24 hour outlooks will be issued for the 0710 and 1910 cycles

• Updated 24 hour forecasts will be issued for the 0110 and 1310 cycles. The outlook from the previous forecast will be repeated ie there will not be a new outlook. 

• At 1010, 1610, 2210 and 0410 there will be a repeat of the previous broadcast.

• Strong Wind Warnings will be issued on receipt from the Met Office if the wind in an inshore forecast area is expected to exceed force 6 and it was not forecast in the last Inshore Forecast. Warnings will be  repeated  in the next broadcast or it will be incorporated into the next main inshore forecast.

•  Inshore waters forecasts and  the extended (3 to 5 day) national outlook will continue on NAVTEX 490 kHz. As, also, will the once a day 3 to 5 day Sea Area outlooks on NAVTEX 518 kHz.

• Broadcasts will be grouped around the coast so that all HMCG transmitters, apart from Clyde, will have completed their broadcast within about 1 hour of the start of the cycle. Clyde has a rather longer broadcast than the other stations.

 There will be some small but significant improvements such as a shorter call on Ch 16, greater attention to delivery of forecasts, alignment of Inshore Waters areas and strong wind warning areas, a separate forecast for the Isle of Man (already implemented). Additionally, it is hoped to provide a new service whereby the Inshore Forecasts can be accessed by telephone at local call rates.

The new schedules will be found on another page of this site.

Met Office Website

In discussion with the Met Office Public Weather Service and the MCA, it has been agreed that the Met Office website should be revamped to include pages that are directly relevant to marine safety. This removes such anomalies as the Shipping and Inshore waters forecasts being on “Leisure” pages.

These pages include

• Shipping forecasts

• High Seas forecasts

• Inshore waters forecasts

• Strong wind, gale and storm warnings

These pages are fine, very easy and clear to use when at home or in an Internet Cafe. On a mobile phone, however, they are "heavy". However, the

Text Only versions are much smaller for GPRS or GSM use.

Even faster downloads of  the Shipping and High Seas forecasts can be found at the WMO/JCOMM site.  The BBC Marine Weather site also has Text Only versions of all UK marine forecasts, including NAVTEX texts and the extended range 3 to 4 day Sea Area forecast. These are also very fast downloads.

In time, it is hoped that these will include actual reports from locations around UK coasts and some marine sites, updated hourly as well as actual and forecast synoptic charts.

Caution: The internet is not part of the Maritime Safety Information system and should never be relied upon as the only means to obtain the latest forecast and warning information. Access to the service may be interrupted or delayed from time to time, updates may also be delayed. Please refer to GMDSS services, INMARSAT SafetyNET or international NAVTEX  for the latest information. When using these web pages, always check that the page on your screen is not from your cache. Use the Refresh or Reload button if in any doubt.

BBC Radio 4

In April 2006, the BBC moved the time of the early morning shipping forecast to 0520 LT, but said that they would use a 16 area inshore waters forecast instead of their old 9 area version. The RYA and CYCC members of the MSI Group agreed to these changes on the basis that

·        For vessels at sea, the actual time of broadcast is not of great relevance as there should always be someone on watch.

·        For those onshore who find this (or the previous time of 0535) too early, there are alternate ways of receiving the forecast, now including the recorded telephone loop      .

• There would be a positive gain in the adoption of the 16 area inshore forecast

When implementing these changes, the BBC found that they could not accommodate sea state forecasts nor an outlook for the next 24 hours within the allotted time. The omission of sea state should not be too important (see my web page. Following discussion with the MCA, Met Office and BBC, it is hoped that he format of the 16 area forecast will be amended to be similar to that of the shipping forecast. That should allow the inclusion of the outlook and a 17^th area for the Isle of Man.

Use of the Internet for Weather MSI

Many, possibly most, leisure sailors make some use of the Internet to obtain weather forecasts. My website, on the GMDSS and other pages, provides many links for this purpose and there are many more that I do not list. Some words of caution and advice may help beginners.

• For day to day decision making, most reliance should be placed on those forecasts produced by National Met Services (UK Met Office, Météo France, Met Éireann etc). These will be based on the most complete data available, the best numerical weather prediction models, tuned to the area, and will have the important benefit of human interpretation and vetting. 

• Sailors should be prepared to compare forecasts from different Met Services. This is not in order to choose the one that you like best, but to look for consistency. As a general rule, inconsistency implies uncertainty.

• For the same reason, compare successive forecasts from the same source eg UK shipping forecasts on the BBC.

Inconsistency from one forecast to the next, again, implies uncertainty.

• Forecasts produced completely automatically should be used with care. In part this applies to some forecasts produced both by private and National Met Services. In particular, it applies to GRIB coded forecasts obtained by various means eg SailDocs, MaxSea, MovingWeather, MailASail, NobelTec, Raytec, Météo France, Theyr.net. There is never any guarantee that the latest forecasts are being provided or that the computer has not had a hiccup. These forecasts are very useful for planning over the next few days. For short term use they should only be used in the light of forecasts with human, intelligent, input.

• Remember that no broadcast or routinely issued forecast is capable of describing the weather on a space/time resolution that we sailors observe. This applies equally to National and private Met services.

Using the Internet when afloat

 Increasingly, there are those who use mobile phones to access the Internet when in harbour or at anchor. For the unwary, this can be costly. For the canny, it can be cost effective. Beginners might like to look at the page on my website, written largely by CA and HROA member Ivan Andrews. I have modified this a little in the light of experience. This deals with setting up mobile phone to laptop links, especially using GPRS.

The revised Met Office website has been designed with a view to small download sizes but this is not always the case. Météo France pages can be very heavy to download.

The links on my GMDSS page  are a useful starter to quick downloads. Experiment at home and look carefully at file sizes. What comes quickly on

broadband or even a dial-up land-line may take minutes over a mobile phone.

Consider using the document retrieval services provided by MailASail (send a blank email to weather@mailasail.com) and by SailDocs (send a blank email to info@saildocs.com)  These services enable the sailor to obtain text off a web page without all the graphics. For example, to look at a NAVTEX text  on the BBC website involves a download of about 200 kb. An email with the same data will be about 30 kb.

Look at data compression services offered by ONSPEED and MailASail. These can greatly reduce email costs. Also, they can make looking at web pages that are largely text based reasonably cost effective once you know the relevant URLs.

Summary

Following discussion with users, HMCG is to implement a substantially improved MSI weather service. The date is expected to be 1 Feb 2007. There will also be improvements to the NAVTEX 490 kHz (National) service but this may not occur on the same date. In parallel, the Met Office has

made significant improvements to its website. Between them, it should become easier for the sailor, leisure and professional, to be able to obtain MSI weather information when at sea, on land or at anchor.