I love weather – observing it, being in a big storm, gathering data, and understanding how it changes what I do both on and off the water. To that end, I have some tools and sites I use listed below, and also details on stations I either run or have helped build.
Tools / Websites
General Weather
For general, non-marine weather, I use a few tools regularly:
- University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences – Northwest Observational Data – tons of data to choose from depending on what you are planning/looking for. Some of the key ones are: – Western Washington Zone Forecast
- Latest Western Washington surface map
- Weather Underground – Seattle – a favorite for a long time. I prefer the 10 day forecast for longer range planning – their graphic showing all of the data from temp, rain, wind, and more is excellent.
- National Weather Service Seattle – good jumping off point to all things NWS, plus a summary graphic in the center of the page.
Marine Weather
Marine weather is a bit more finicky to plan around, and as such, I use a number of tools to help with that process:
- National Weather Service Seattle Marine page – great page maintained by NWS with all of the various marine data they provide.
- Coastal Waters Forecast – this is the one I use the most for planning on the water. There are two versions of it, and I prefer the one from the UW – it is much better formatted and shows up nicely on a phone or mobile device, which I use frequently when planning. – UW: Coastal Waters Forecast
- NWS: Coastal Waters Forecast
- NWS Marine Portal – this is an experimental, graphical
- Ferry Weather – Washington State Ferries and the UW take the wind data off of moving ferries. Not very frequent but still good data.
Stations
I run several weather stations including:
- Nile Weather – at our family cabin near Nile, WA
- Friday Harbor Weather – maintained by Steve Roberts on his boat and documented here.
- Ocean Park Weather – friends weather station that I maintain near Long Beach, WA
In addition, I submit information to a number of other websites and services below:
There’s more details on the dedicated site above – I am planning on trying to integrate some of this here on this site.
