We’ve used several weather sites and apps over the years in helping us predict when we get to go fishing in our driveway. Yep, we’re well into the season of higher tides and southerly winds. “Yuletides” measuring close to 13 feet will be gracing our shores starting on Christmas while the dreaded King Tides (my definition is over 13 feet) start up later in January.
BDB compiles several different government weather sources to come up with the Barking Dog warning…
A “barking dog report” means that we are very closely watching the sound and preparing to possibly flood. It may or may not happen (hopefully not!!). Consider us your neighbor’s barking dog who’s barking at potential trouble.
This has me wondering if there are any free sites/apps that can provide all the info you want in an easy to understand format. It’s a safe bet that most weather sites are pulling their stats off of NOAA satellites/beacons so it’s just a matter of which site/app works for you. Here’s a few freebies that stood out to me…
Predict Wind includes a robust amount of weather info (includes predicted wave & tide heights) but totally whiffed in predicting our last big blow in November. They claim that their custom report/models are used by America’s Cup & Volvo Ocean sailors more than any other forecast applications. They’re predicting that we’ll be seeing peak gusts of 50 knots around 9:oo AM tomorrow…
iWindsurf was recommended by a neighbor and is now my go-to app. It accurately predicted our last couple of windy days off of Alki Pt. This snapshot of their Prediction Table is showing steady wind of 21 knots with peak gusts to 48 for tomorrow at 5:00 PM.
There are several good sources for tide heights but I prefer Tide Graph HD from Brainware LLC. Here’s the height for Seattle @ 6PM tomorrow…
Wave height is pretty much a factor of wind speed around here. The fetch or travel distances approx. the same from North to South.
Wind 10-20 Kt = 3 footers
Wind 15-25 Kt = 4 footers
Wind 25-35 Kt = 6 footers
Wind 35-45 Kt = up to 8 feet! (BTW, predicted by NOAA Marine forecast for Puget Sound/Hood Canal this Thursday evening)
Beach Drive’s own Psycho of the Soup uses the IWindsurf app to map out wind speed forecasts for slaying the surf along the drive.
Scupper, reporting for Beach Drive Blog
About Scupper
“Alki wind alert” is a great web site for wind. weather, tide…http://windalert.com/spot/479
Thanks for the new go-to weather app Jim! Most other free versions don’t let you see all the different variables on one screen… forecast tables, wind graphs, tide charts, marine forecast and recent history. Love it.
A good “real time” site we’ve found for wind speed and direction is from the WA State Ferries. Mobile weather stations… http://i90.atmos.washington.edu/ferry/Ferryjs/mainframe1.htm