The blog
Weather analysis and forecasting maps developed by the NOAA (USA) and the Met Office (UK) cover vast areas over the Wold. They can be obtained sending a request by email to the weather server of british company MailaSail. With the latter, many maps are available in a listing (¹) in which it suffices to click on the links to load the request in a message ready to send.
[Update September 13 th 2025]
I relayed in December 2018 an excellent issue published on the blog of our friends at Geogarage, who make a permanent duty of a press review of the best foreign articles concerning cartography, meteorology, and more generally all subjects related to maritime navigation. Here is a translation freely adapted and commented on in French. Read more …
It's a long time since I had made a reading note in this category. Lack of time, or lack of discovery ? I once again found a real literary enthusiasm when I read this excellent book by Raymond Reding : " Beaufort, The Admiral of the Wind ”.
Like any sailor that complies, I know the Beaufort scale since my first legs in sailing school, but, shame on me, I had never tried to find out more about this famous Francis Beaufort ! Raymond Reding, went like me through Les Glénans Sailing school, finally fills this lamentable lacuna with the greatest happiness. Read more …
In full political news on global climate change, the terrible Hurricane Harvey questioned some scientists about the link between warming due to human activities and intense weather events increasing in recent years.
Source : National Weather Service
Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center and author of three books, including The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars, Dire Predictions, and The Madhouse Effect, develops a long commentary in theguardian.com (¹) about it, freely translated by myself.
[Update 15 February 2019] The recent update of the application Iridium Mail & Web app gives me the opportunity to refresh this post originally written in December 2011.
The Wi-Fi Gateway Optimizer from RedPort allows owners of a mobile satellite phone to make requests and receive GRIB weather files from an iPad or iPhone on the high seas, into the wild, anywhere on the world.
After implementing and testing this solution On a long journey, It proved to be perfectly operational. However, it is limited to the receipt of the forecasts of the GFS weather model worldwide, and the wave pattern WW3, obtained by the American server's autoresponder Saildocs.
Delivered in AppStore this morning after two weeks of revisions and contre-revisions of Apple services, Always more picky, The new version is finally available. On the menu and in bulk : AIS via internet with AISHub, direct access to Geogarage and cache memory chart management, new model of GRIB weather forecast from Meteo-France AROME HD for inshore races, Full-screen mode, advanced distance calculations, the most visible. Under the hood also a lot of optimization for routing and power consumption. Detailed review to follow… Read more …
A year after my advocacy for free European data (¹) Météo-France finally offers free access to its two famous ARPEGE and AROME models. A welcome development, started in 2014 by the success of MyOcean, since then integrated into Mercator Ocean (²), but a notable change of attitude for a public establishment which has always been asked to self-finance a significant part of its budget. Forecasts from these two models are made available on Météo-France portal in the GRIB version 2 format. Since the 21 July 2015.
By a corrected notification on 23 December 2014 (¹), with NWS (National Weather Service) NOAA announced a major update to its GFS weather prediction model to be effective in mid-January 2015. Actually, This model has been partially available on an experimental basis since the beginning of December.
March, the Global Forecast System (GFS) is a weather forecasting model produced by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) dependent on the NWS. Dozens of variables (²) are available through this dataset, from the temperatures, winds and precipitation down to soil moisture and atmospheric ozone concentration. The entire world is covered by the current GFS model with a horizontal resolution of 27 km between grid points up to 10 days. The horizontal resolution is 70 km for forecasts between one week and two weeks. The GFS model is a coupled model, Composed of four distinct models (An atmospheric model, An ocean model, A terrestrial model, and a sea ice model), that compete together to give an accurate picture of weather conditions. Changes are regularly made to the GFS model to improve the performance and accuracy of the forecasts. Mesh data is available for download via NOMADS servers (National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System) and widely used by app developers around the world.
Since its announcement last February, and GO! took a long time to arrive at retailers until the beginning of this month. The company E-SAT gave me one to conduct some tests. Although too late to carry out these tests at sea, the Quai des Antilles on the Ile de Nantes offers a wide sky clearance also than the deck of a boat, enough to connect satellites of all-round. Two types of tests were carried out : requests and receipts of GRIB weather files from an iPad featured with Weather4D PRO app, functions related to telephony from an iPhone.
This could be a subject of the Baccalaureate in Economic Sciences, and although I never took this exam (because of post-68 incompatibility and Cancerism chronic) The subject seems to me sufficiently imminent and serious to attempt to deal with it, from my modest point of view. Read more …