UK Marine Coastal Weather Services

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About this page

Marine weather forecasts around the UK and western Europe are summarised on this page.

On this page -

The MCA, and HMCG in particular, are very proactive in the implementation of UK MSI services to coastal mariners. In particular, Les Snaith, SAR Operations and Publications Manager, HMCG is always willing to discuss with users and to consider suggestions and criticisms. Steve Huxley, Head of Falmouth MRCC is responsible for NAVTEX broadcasts and is actively studying improvements to the NAVTEX 490 kHz broadcasts. Nick Ashton, Business Manager, Marine at the Met Office is driving the improvements to the Met Office web site.

The RYA and CYCC, particularly David Darbyshire and Stuart Carruthers, put in a vast amount of work drawing together the many and various inputs from yachtsmen.

UK HMCG procedures.

The content and schedules of the broadcasts of MSI on VHF are as agreed by the RYA and CYCC after much discussion with associations, clubs and individual members. The salient features of these broadcasts are -

  • VHF (and MF) weather information are broadcast every three hours, i.e. eight times daily.
  • The daily forecast cycle starts at 0710 LT with updates or repeats three hourly until the start of the following daily cycle.
  • Full new inshore waters 24 hour forecasts plus new 24 hour outlooks are issued for the 0110, 0710, 1310 and 1910 cycles
  • The 1010, 1610, 2210 and 0410 cycles are repeats of the previous broadcast.
  • Strong Wind Warnings are issued on receipt from the Met Office if the wind in an inshore forecast area is expected to exceed force 6 and it was not forecast in the last Inshore Forecast. Warnings are repeated in the next broadcast or incorporated into the next new inshore forecast.
  • Broadcasts are grouped around the coast so that all HMCG transmitters, apart from Clyde, complete their broadcast within about 1 hour of the start of the cycle. Clyde has a rather longer broadcast than the other stations.
  • Inshore waters forecasts will continue on NAVTEX 490 kHz. As, also, will the once a day 3 to 5 day Sea Area outlooks on NAVTEX 518 kHz.

There is a short call on Ch 16 to announce broadcasts. There is a separate forecast for the Isle of Man prepared by he I of M Met service. Schedules of HMCG broacasts will be found on another page of this site.

Met Office Website

The Met Office website contains texts of

  • Shipping forecasts
  • High Seas forecasts
  • Inshore waters forecasts
  • Strong wind, gale and storm warnings
  • Updated hourly actual reports from all round the British Isles

These pages are available in printable form for quick downloading via a mobile phone or direct to a mobile phone or PDA.

Even faster downloads of the Shipping and High Seas forecasts can be

found at the WMO/JCOMM site. The BBC Marine Weather site also has Text Only versions of all UK marine forecasts, including NAVTEX texts and the extended range 3 to 4 day Sea Area outlooks. These are also fast downloads.

Caution: The internet is not part of the Maritime Safety Information system and should never be relied upon as the only means to obtain the latest forecast and warning information. Access to the service may be interrupted or delayed from time to time, updates may also be delayed. Please refer to GMDSS services, INMARSAT SafetyNET or international NAVTEX for the latest information. When using these web, always check that the page on your screen is not from your cache. Use the Refresh or Reload button if in any doubt.

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 long wave broadcasts the 17 area Inshore waters forecasts after the 0048 and 0521 shipping forecasts. The late night broadcast includes actual reports from a long list of coastal stations. The early morning broadcast uses a shorter list.

These times are not a problem when sailing, For those ashore and who like their sleep, the Internet has all the relevant information.

Use of the Internet for Weather MSI

Many, possibly most, leisure sailors make some use of the Internet to obtain weather forecasts. My website, on the GMDSS and other pages, provides many links for this purpose and there are many more that I do not list. Some words of caution and advice may help beginners.

  • For day to day decision making, most reliance should be placed on those forecasts produced by National Met Services (UK Met Office, Météo France, Met Éireann etc). These will be based on the most complete data available, the best numerical weather prediction models, tuned to the area, and will have the important benefit of human interpretation and vetting.
  • Sailors should be prepared to compare forecasts from different Met Services. This is not in order to choose the one that you like best, but to look for consistency. As a general rule, inconsistency implies uncertainty.
  • For the same reason, compare successive forecasts from the same source eg UK shipping forecasts on the BBC.
Inconsistency from one forecast to the next, again, implies uncertainty.
  • Forecasts produced completely automatically should be used with care. In part this applies to some forecasts produced both by private and National Met Services. In particular, it applies to GRIB coded forecasts obtained by various means eg SailDocs, MovingWeather, MailASail, NobelTec, Raytec, Météo France, Theyr.net. There is never any guarantee that the latest forecasts are being provided or that the computer has not had a hiccup. These forecasts are very useful for planning over the next few days. For short term use they should only be used in the light of forecasts with human, intelligent, input.
  • Remember that no broadcast or routinely issued forecast is capable of describing the weather on a space/time resolution that we sailors observe. This applies equally to National and private Met services.

Using the Internet when afloat

Increasingly, there are those who use mobile phones to access the Internet when in harbour or at anchor. For the unwary, this can be costly. For the canny, it can be cost effective. Beginners might like to look at the page on my website, written largely by CA and HROA member Ivan Andrews. I have modified this a little in the light of experience. This deals with setting up mobile phone to laptop links, especially using GPRS.

The revised Met Office website has been designed with a view to small download sizes but this is not always the case. Météo France pages can be very heavy to download.

The links on my GMDSS page are a useful starter to quick downloads. Experiment at home and look carefully at file sizes. What comes quickly on

broadband or even a dial-up land-line may take minutes over a mobile phone.

Consider using the document retrieval services provided by MailASail (send a blank email to weather@mailasail.com) and by SailDocs (send a blank email to info@saildocs.com) These services enable the sailor to obtain text off a web page without all the graphics. For example, to look at a NAVTEX text on the BBC website involves a download of about 200 kb. An email with the same data will be about 30 kb.

Look at data compression services offered by ONSPEED and MailASail. These can greatly reduce email costs. Also, they can make looking at web pages that are largely text based reasonably cost effective once you know the relevant URLs.

Summary

The UK HMCG VHF weather broadcast have been developed in consultation with users. In parallel, the Met Office website provides a useful back-up service, as does the BBC site and the Internet in general. If there are problems, sailors are invited to channel their comments, criticisms and suggestion through the RYA.

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