GribUS Weather System for Sailors

Back in March 2008 I posted a blog about this FREE weather service available to all sailors worldwide, no matter where you are, or where you may be sailing.

Like all web technology, it has been improved and I draw your attention again to this excellent service. You can find it on http://www.grib.us/

There you can download the software FREE and place it on your 'desktop' or include it into your 'favourites' list. It is very simple to use just by boxing the area you want weather information for. You have a pan facility, zoom in and out and it gives you wind strength and direction along with isobars, plus rain areas and intensity. It is updated every six hours.

A new feature enables you to animate the reports so you have a moving image for a twenty four or forty eight hour period at whatever speed you set.

Here is an extract from their website:

Grib is the format used by the meteorological institutes of the world to transport and manipulate weather data and is the foundation of the forecasts we see around us in our daily life. In the past, accessing and viewing GRIB weather data has often required a tricky combination of technical knowledge and expensive software.

Now there's GRIB.US. A company that empowers you, the end-user, to interactively extract your own custom GRIB weather files tailored to your needs. We also provide you with our - easy to use- Ugrib software to view this data so that you can look at weather data for anywhere in the world when you want to, where you want to. Best of all, this is all for FREE!

How to get the GRIB data:

The Ugrib software: our own windows software will let you view the GRIB files you have just downloaded, animate them, display meteograms and much more!

It also allows direct access to our backend servers without the need to open a browser. Ideal for use either ashore or on a limited bandwidth connection e.g. onboard a yacht. Ugrib will let you choose your resolution, timesteps, variables etc. Also you can save these settings for future use.

All this tightly integrated into one simple to use program.This website: in the Grib data section it has a graphical selection tool that allows the immediate download of surface GRIB data with 10m Winds and Sea Level Pressure. There are no preset areas and you can select exactly the area you need.

Extract and images courtesy of GribUS.

You can read more about weather systems when sailing, extracting data and weather forecasting for your own use on passage in my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship 'Tere Moana', downloadable from my website http://www.sailboat2adventure.com/