Sneak peak of new Swellnet forecasting tools
@ Ben so are you placing more areas up for S. Oz? and why go into the detail of which way the beach faces or will that just be an east coast thing?
The south-facing and northeast-facing equations are only for the East Coast (and other similar coasts around the world).
Will all content be free Ben?
All content will be free, except the 16 day forecasts (they're for subscribers, who will enjoy a range of other benefits). However 5-day forecasts - including the complex swell train analysis data - will be free as per our current website.
Shouldn't the long time users get a freebie. I'll even give you one onshore 1 ft
sunny coast wave. Have you worked out prices? And also will you have more location specific forecasting?
Im referring to the written forecasts. Cheers
We're overhauling our entire surf report and forecast system rees0, of which some of the changes will happen immediately and others will happen over time. You'll just have to wait and see.
Ben, some feedback on the graph you put up. I was in WA last weekend for the swell. The winds were NE all day on the Sunday, opening up all options. I know its a tough forecast, but your model had it onshore both days from the W, but conditions were glassy and offshore pretty much all weekend. The SW change came through late Sunday and wrote it off. You can view the readings for the Sunday at
http://www.seabreeze.com.au/graphs/wa_last7.asp
Are you using Weatherzone for the wind forecasts?
I guess as a potential subscriber you want this shit to be right.
On the plus side the forecasts for the Vicco trip were spot on, with the updated runs accurate to the hour
Hahah sorry got the wrong weekend was in WA previous weekend. Just checked today, as forecasted in WA gale Westerlies! Still interested in where you get the wind forecasts from, as have been knocked over a few times in WA. Seabreeze although being a WA site has some shockers too.
Thanks for clarifying Mick.. had me worried there for a minute!
Almost every publicly available weather forecast uses the exact same data (GFS, via NCEP), so if one site is wrong, they're all going to be wrong. Doesn't matter where a website originates from - NSW, WA or Europe - the location of its office has no bearing on the accuracy of the wind forecast.
Also, our forecasting system doesn't use anything Weatherzone data at all - this is all in-house to Swellnet.
World domination is imminent
Also, our forecasting system doesn't use anything Weatherzone data at all - this is all in-house to Swellnet.
By: "thermalben"
So your models aren't based on GFS then Ben?
Also, any update on the ETA for the new site?
Yeah, this phase of the system is based on GFS. What I meant was - we get our data independent of Weatherzone (even though we share office space with 'em).
Site should go live in a couple of days - just doing some last minute checks and tests.
Schweet, thanks Ben.
You going live this week Ben?
Hopefully Don, still ironing out a few bugs but we're nearly there. It's quite tricky to manage the transition between an existing site and a new site (that we've had to keep running while we build the new one) - the new site is on a completely brand new database and hosting infrastructure, so once we switch over there's no going back (if something buggers up). Hence the numerous last minute checks.
Looking like sometime mid-week (this week). We've had a couple of last minute gremlins in the system that have been particularly stubborn to get on top of.
hey ben any word as too when you fellas switch over to the new site. I find a hammer smashing ontop of the key board, lap top or desk top usally works on stubborn computer gremlins.
Fuck Salt, it's as frustrating as all get out this testing business. Reckon we might have to resort to a hammer shortly. We're working on it every day but the 'to do' list keeps growing.
Real soon though, real soon.
Seriously try ACCESS for the winds, they do pretty good at synoptic and land/sea breezes. I find Seabreeze to be pretty much useless for landbreezes, and only good for larger scale trends in wind and swell size.
To be honest, I think I'll stick with the written forecasts anyway. Being more or less a Brissy weekend warrior, I like to know the reliability of the forecasts. E.g: this upcoming sth swell, we could decide to go up the sunny coast to escape the crowds a bit. Considering the forecast puts it in the mid size groundswell range (sth of the border), it could be decent up there, see friends & family, etc. but we usually just end up driving straight to Tallows just cos it's so reliable.
Correct me if I'm wrong here...
from GFS via NCEP, you get a bunch of values for bunch of points on a grid, a series of virtual buoys? Then you guys extrapolate that data to the shoreline?
And what about water temps?
Anyway, the more a forecasting site seems to rely on models, the less I trust them. I kinda just look at the numbers and colours and roll my eyes, assuming it's all the same bulk GFS data which is super unreliable for the sunny coast. Good for general trends, but not for surf heights.
ACCESS has a couple of different products and some are better than other. The coarsest resolution is G (global) but has the longest run time. R (regional) is a higher res model which does perform a little better but only goes out 72hrs. There's also an 'Australia' model (A) which is even finer resolution and a 'City' resolution (C) which runs at an amazing 0.05° (~5km) which would be your best for local winds - except it's only available for capital city domains.
The accuracy of ACCESSG has been a little hit and miss over the last year or two (since it was launched) but an upgrade was due at some point that was going to improve on this considerably - I haven't heard any news on this (or seen any scores) but this will be much welcome.
Correct me if I'm wrong here...
from GFS via NCEP, you get a bunch of values for bunch of points on a grid, a series of virtual buoys? Then you guys extrapolate that data to the shoreline?
By: "mitchvg"
Kinda, but kinda not. All models run on grid points, with locations between being interpolated - there are differences in the resolution (ie 1.0 degree, 0.5 degree etc) which can affect the accuracy of of the model output but this also depends on the location. However, once we run the wave model we then have our own in-house calculations that converts each location's output to 'surf' data. It's a resource-hungry system but we're very happy with the results.
As for ocean temps - the only global dataset available is satellite derived, which has many inherent flaws when relating to the nearshore zone.
With the imminent launch of our website upgrade, I thought I'd give everyone a sneak peek of one of our new forecasting tools: 16-day surf forecasts broken down into specific swell trains, but with our proprietary calculated 'surf height' algorithm at the top. You can also - as per the second image - expand the view into a 6-hourly forecast for each day (we'll also have 3-hourly and 1-hourly data available down the track).
Because the East Coast is under the grips of a small spell of waves, we figured this week's upcoming episode of large surf in Margaret River was a good opportunity to show how the model copes with large variations in ocean conditions.
Expanded view (Fri/Sat/Sun):