Another weather website

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jpg76
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Re: Another weather website

Post by jpg76 »

Hi jb2020,

The devil is in the detail. Several years ago when Willyweather was set up BoM only had about 50 ports around Australia they provided tide times for. Willyweather referenced each of their locations to one of these ports and put in a time offset for that spot to specify its tide times.

Since those early days BoM has increased its tidal information service and now provides data for 708 ports around the country. The port data supplied by BoM is calculated using fourier transforms and takes into account the particulars of that location like long/lat, moon/sun position, hence it offers a very precise tide for that location. Fish Ranger uses the full 708 ports BoM supplies data for whereas Willyweather still uses a a small number of ports from their early days, they have not upgraded to use the full suite of ports. This is why you will see differences in tide times and heights.

Take for example Bouchier Channel in Western Port, that is a location where BoM started provided tide data for recently. Fish Ranger uses BoM's tide data for that reference port whereas Willyweather still references tides at Bouchier Channel back to Stony Point.
On the fish Ranger page click the little (i) next to the tide chart, it says 'Tide Times based on Bouchier Channel'
https://www.fishranger.com.au/tides/sun ... r%20Chanel

Now go to Willyweathers page for Bouchier, go to Tides, and click the little (i). It comes up and says "the tide times for Bouchier Channel have been adjusted by 40 mins for low and 40 mins for high off the official tide times for Stony Point"
https://tides.willyweather.com.au/vic/g ... annel.html

Now go to BoM's tide page and you'll see they have a reference port at Bouchier Channel:
http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/tides/#!/vic

So you can see Wilyweather are not using the Bouchier Channel port times supplied by BoM, they are using the tide times for Stony Point then saying Bouchier Channel high and low are 40 mins after Stony Point. This is a crude approximation.

This is very likely the reason you notice a disrepancy at the location you are looking at. If you tell me the location I'll check it out for you.


Joe
jb2020
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Re: Another weather website

Post by jb2020 »

Cheers mate, thanks for the detailed response. location was 13th beach. FR says it is based on bheads with 0 adjustment so thats what Ill use from now on. WW tide data is adjusted from PPH.
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happyas
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Re: Another weather website

Post by happyas »

Previous articles should explain the tide differences between the 2 sites.
jpg76
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Re: Another weather website

Post by jpg76 »

Hi JB, yes for 13th beach that's the reason. Barwon Heads is now a standard port BoM supply data for. Its calculated at the barwon heads bridge so tide times on 13th beach which is a couple km away and without coastal obstruction will be the same as tide times at the bridge.

Without wanting to sound funny about it, I have engineered every aspect of Fish Ranger to be as good as or better than every other site in every aspect - accuracy wise. Feature wise it's a case of personal preference however I think the features fish Ranger has are also the best. It's just so hard to get that message across to people. Weather prediction is not a precise science so forecasts will often be out but there is a 'best answer'.

I am so confident about it I am willing to offer $5000 to anyone that can come up with a sensible reason why Fish Ranger would not be your go to weather site.
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Re: Another weather website

Post by Steve_R »

IMO people should be using sites, not site.

For example, when it comes to wave heights I like:
http://nearshore.waves.nsw.gov.au/index ... m=7&mod=20
Using this I can get an appreciation of variation between wave heights at different ends of a beach. Unfortunately there seems to be no equivalent in Victoria. Here is a screen shot:
Capture.JPG
The scale of wave height is on the left (white = very low); you can change date and time (by the hour) to pick increasing or decreasing swell and changing direction. So, in the image, Geroa (near white arrow at top) would be a friendlier launch site than Shoalhaven heads (nearer the middle of the map).
If you do wish to play with nearshore.waves, move, zoom etc then use the refresh button.

None of anything I've said should be taken as criticism of Fish Ranger (nor an attempt to claim $5k ;) ) . It only means I prefer information presented in a variety of ways rather than rely on a sole source.

It is good to have access to someone so confident in their product they'll open themselves up to questions. Hopefully, questions and comments will continue so we continue to learn.
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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience - Greg King

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows ― Epictetus


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jpg76
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Re: Another weather website

Post by jpg76 »

Hi Steve,

I do agree with you, seeing information in different ways improves our understanding of it. That page is great for the live buoy readings and yes it would be good if it was country wide rather than just NSW. I'll send BoM a message and ask if they have any plans to ingest that data or have it on their systems (so Fish Ranger could easily ingest it).

West Australia also have some live buoys but managed by a different group again.

I will just point out one thing though :ugeek: the forecast data on that page is from the NOAA WaveWatch III forecast model which is from the USA. It is not a BoM forecast model. When BoM meterologists prepare their forecasts for Australia they have access to a variety of sources, including WaveWatch III, they then adjust the Australian grids according to their educated guess and inputs from various systems. While WaveWatch III is pretty accurate with swell (since that's much easier to predict as its slow moving), it uses GFS model data for the Wind input which is often wrong. This means the Total Wave height predicted by the model will be wrong as well (Total Wave height = Wind Wave + Swell1 + Swell2 + Swell3 but calculated using a wave interference model since they don't add linearly).

So why does the nearshore wave page use WaveWatch instead of BoM data you may ask.... Especially if I'm saying BoM data is better??? Well I can't give you a definite answer on that but BoM ADFD forecast data is adjusted by humans as a final step before being released. Many automated weather systems use algorithms that require consistent inputs, especially when they have a machine learning feature, so they require data that has not been modified by 'unpredictable' humans. I know that's the case for some other systems so this may also be the same.
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Yako
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Re: Another weather website

Post by Yako »

FishRanger may be shutting down if Joe who's been developing it, if it doesn't get enough support & sponsors he said :down: jpg are you the dev?
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John 3.16/17
jpg76
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Re: Another weather website

Post by jpg76 »

hi Yako, I am Joe the founder of Fish Ranger, aka jpg76 on this forum.
Not a developer per se, I'm in the IT industry but not a coder. I have a team that do the coding.
And yes unfortunately it is at risk of shutting down due to lack of sponsorship.
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Yako
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Re: Another weather website

Post by Yako »

jpg76 wrote:hi Yako, I am Joe the founder of Fish Ranger, aka jpg76 on this forum.
Not a developer per se, I'm in the IT industry but not a coder. I have a team that do the coding.
And yes unfortunately it is at risk of shutting down due to lack of sponsorship.
Sorry to hear it's not going well. I think too many think Willy is the Best thing since sliced bread.
I don't use Willy as I've found their data off & even when I highlight these consistent issues people still use it :o
and then wonder why they get into strife.
Even MetEye gets it wrong a fair bit (& we must believe they are 100 % right about global warming :lol: ok I'll move on).
I know FR also has forecasts that can be a fair bit off but then you're relying on others data I presume?
I hope things pick up for you.
John 3.16/17
jpg76
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Re: Another weather website

Post by jpg76 »

Hi Yako, thanks for your support. It's been a labor of passion to get to this point building something which I truly believe in so I hope it can survive.

I thought I should clear something up -> Fish Ranger, MetEye and Willyweather all use the same forecast data created by BoM. There is NO point comparing them against each other for wind, temp, rain. There is no 'interpretation' of the data it is simply read from the file and displayed on screen.

Willyweather however is not a marine forecasting site - meaning they don't give forecasts over open water. They instead give forecasts on land. Wind over water can be up to twice as strong as it is on land so if you are going out on the water you need to check the forecast on the water and not in the suburb where you launch your boat/yak. This is the main reason you should not use Willyweather.
I demonstrate this in a video if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=I1pynq8R2NQ
And in this video I explain how to look for it: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=Xpa-M2aapps

In addition, Wilyweather does not use BoM data for swell forecasts they use the free american alternative Wavewatch.
And Fish Ranger shows extra variables Meteye and willy don't show like airpressure, cloud cover, Total Wave with period and has many more live wind features like Wind-3D, wind gust speed.

If you compare wind forecasts between Willy and Fish Ranger and MetEye on land you will see the values are exactly the same. If you compare them on water you will see Fish Ranger and Meteye are the same (Willy don't give you forecasts over water so you can't compare them).

I also reccomend you don't use Seabreeze since one forecast for all of 'melbourne' is crazy. Wind across the bay can often be 10 knot different so how can one forecast be the right forecast for everywhere? It can't. Seabreeze don't actually tell you where they take the forecast point from. And the last time I looked, PPB doesn't have wave period since there is no swell in the bay :roll:

The way I check the weather if I'm going out in a boat is as follows:
1) Check Fish Ranger - this will be the best guess of weather as it uses the BoM ADFD data model and gives a true marine forecast
2) Check https://www.windy.com and select the exact same location you selected on Fish Ranger. Then choose 'Forecast for this location' and when it comes up, compare against the ECMWF model and the GFS model (selectable).

This way you are checking boM's best guess, then the European's best guess, then the American's best guess. Get a consensus among these and you have the most confidence in a forecast possible.

Every other site has fundamental floors and limitations. Follow the above and you will be the most informed.
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