Weather Charts on the Internet

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About this page

Links to weather charts from the UK and other national Met services. Brief exlanations for these are given by links to another page.

On this page -

European Met Service charts

UK Met Office Charts - Isobars and fronts - North Atlantic/Europe.

See explanatory notes on the Essential page.

Links are given here; the size of each chart is about 60 kb which is significant if using a cell or satellite phone connection.

Times of issue

Analysis charts are usually available by HH+0320
24-hour forecasts by HH+0520
T+36 and T+48 forecasts by 0620/1820 UTC
T+60 and T+72 forecasts by 0720/1920 UTC
T+96 and T+120 forecast are only issued once a day, based on 1200UTC data, usually available after 2320UTC

Chart sequences

To see a sequence on one page of the latest UK charts to 5 days ahead, see either -

All latest UK forecast charts in full size. (Page is about 790KB in total)

All latest UK forecast charts in reduced size. (Page is about 290KB in total)

These charts are also available in colour direct from the Met Office Charts site:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/charts/index.html - Only updated once per day

Timing of the issue of charts is complex and described in notes provided by Martin Stubbs.

Dutch Weather Service (KNMI)

Surface actual and forecast charts are available via WINDFINDER. Direct links to these are as follows

HIRLAM

HIRLAM High Resolution Limited Area Model forecasts for two days ahead are available from theKNMI, the Dutch Weather Service. An alternative is the Italian MeteoMar site.

UK Charts from USAF-E

For notes on these charts see the Essential page Note 1 - Like all sites this one is revamped from time to time. The most recent update that I have was on 5 February 2007. If the links below are dead then try the home page.

Note 2 These charts are rather "fussy" and slow to download. They go further east than the charts above.

There are plotted chart of actual weather for much of Europe and the Eastern N Atlantic. For those who want to see charts of upper levels there is a very comprehensive set of UK products. as well as a Satellite analysis.

Forecast surface charts are at

Eastern N Atlantic, Europe and Russia

Central and Eastern North Atlantic and Western Europe,

NOTE - On the Sembach site there are two versions of each of these series of forecasts. The only difference is in the colouration. I have given those that show isobars the most clearly.

Computer Charts - Unmodified

A note on these is on the Essential page. They are output direct from Numericl Weather Prediction models. They can be quite difficult to interpret and should be used with care. As is the case with GRIB forecasts, there has been no vetting or quality control.

UK Met Office

500hPa,Surface

ECMWF

The weather.org.uk site has a comprehensive set of charts of all forms, including computer output.

Unmodified HIRLAM Charts are available from the Italian MeteoMar site..

PassageWeather provides Wind and Wave Forecasts using the GFS and WaveWatch III weather models, that produce GRIB files. Using an easy-to-use menu relatively small areas can be selected eg the English Channel and the Balearic Islands as well as large areas such as the North Atlantic.

A similar service is available from WINDFINDER. Both give the output out to 15 days although I would regard anything beyond 7 days as rather speculative.

Many others can be found at Georg Mueller's Wetterzentrale site at Karlsruhe University. Charts include upper air and jet stream charts that are of little interest to the majority of sailors but are sought by a few cognoscenti.