HTML Graph
Color Graph
Text Table
COLA METEOGRAM
GFS Text
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If you don't have a real weather buoy nearby, a Virtual Buoy is the next best thing,
or better in some ways. It is a wave model prediction of a buoy report. Wave height,
wave direction, wind speed, wind direction and period are extracted from NOAA WAVEWATCHII
model and displayed like a buoy report. From the report, you are able to estimate the current
wind and swell conditions and get a seven day buoy report forecast. Virtual Buoys bring quality
marine weather forecasts to remote areas of the world. A global set of Virtual Buoys are freely
available on BuoyWeather as a public service. This is now a necessity! It is the point specific forecast
you need to safely plan your marine activities. Virtual Buoy's have three display options: Color Bar Graph - Nowcast and 7 day text forecast with all of the data plotted in bar charts. Text Graph - The free Virtual Buoy report. The graphs are made with HTML tables. A nice clean display we have used for several years. Loads fast. Text Table - Formatted text tables made for printing. Print this one and take it with you. BuoyWeather PRO subscribers can receive this via daily email for ten cents a day. The forecasts go out at 6-hour intervals for 7 days. Both WAVEWATCHIII & GFS model update 4 times per day. For the WAVEWATCHIII based forecast, there are six Ocean variables forecasted for each time: Seas - The low number is the significant wave height provided by the model. The average of the highest 1/3 waves. This is an average and may not be the highest you'll see. The upper end of the range is 1.5 X significant height. This is closer to the largest swell you may encounter during the six hour forecast period. You should be prepared to deal with this if you are planning to go out. Peak Period(seconds) - The interval between wave crests measured in seconds. Large, short period (<12 sec) swells can mean danger to small craft. Long period swells mean opportunity for surfers. You can see swells coming and going in the data by watching step changes in period. Each step means a new swell has become primary. Peak Direction (degrees) - The direction of the peak period swell. This is rarely the only swell present. There can be many swells crossing a single point on the Ocean at the same time. The peak direction only shows the direction of the swell with the most energy. Wind Speed and Direction - This gives you the overall wind flow. For points near land, you may have to make further interpretation to adjust for local topography and land/sea breezes. You will often see the prevailing wind pattern in the graphs with light winds in the morning and afternoon sea breezes. The tighter the pressure gradient, the more accurate the forecasted winds will be. In other words, higher wind forecasts in the report are usually more accurate. Forecasted winds of less than 10kts are variables. Surf - Surf is what happens when swell hits land or shallow reef. For points near land, the swell height and period are used to derive a surf height forecast. Usefull if you are diving, fishing, surfing, or navigating a pass. The surf range is the front face heights in feet. It can be tough to make this conversion where reefs, islands or points are blocking the swell. The logic works like this. If a shoreline is exposed to the swell direction indicated, you should see at least the lower end of the surf range. If a shoreline is perfectly exposed to the swell direction indicated, you might see the upper end of the range. For more information about the WAVEWATCH model, check out NOAA/NCEP/OMB WAVEWATCHIII home page. The GFS model provides data for land and sea areas. If you are over land, in the Mediteranean or Red Sea, these are the forecasts you need to to use. We have two meteogram files based on NOAA's GFS model: COLA Meteogram - This a dynamic run of COLA's meteogram script. There is one set for each virtual buoy point, but using the data browser you can get a custom meteogram for anywhere, sea or land. Please note that this will run slower than the other formats due to the amount of proccesing. It can take up to a minute sometimes for the image to come up.
For more information about the meteogram, Check here:
GFS Text - A text verion of the meteogram suitable for email. Plus it loads fast. This forecast can be very useful whether in the tropics or in the mountains. Most of the variables are self explanitory and covered in the COLA Meteogram Guide. LI stands for Lifted Index. Here is the general interpretation:
LI values greater than 0 mean thunderstorms are unlikely CP is the Convective Available Potential Energy(CAPE) divided by 100 to save space. Here is the general interpretation for the numbers in this forecast:
CP values between 3 and 10 mean weak thunderstorm activity The T-STORM column reads the LI and CP for each time to determine the thunderstorm likeliness.
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