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IntroductionYou may have thought that getting weather forecasts for a land that does not exist yet would be difficult. While there in not yet a forecast produced for the kingdom of New Atlantis as such what we do have are forecasts that cover the area in which we are going to build it. In addition there are forecasts for shipping and forecasts for the nearest islands Bermuda to the west and the Azores to the east. The location we have chosen is calmer and finer than either of these as it is the center of a permanent high pressure area, and all other weather moves around this. The weather at our chosen location will be more like Bermuda than the Azores, as the wind tends to come from the south to both. What do we want to knowThe most important factors to us at this point is wind direction and wave height, as this effects the way we build the kingdom. Later we may also be interested in forecasting sea temperature, rainfall, hours of sunlight and wind. Of these some are available now as forecasts and some as actual recordings. Ocean weather forecastsProbably the easiest to understand and most visual forecast covering wind direction and wave height, is a gif that has in effect a large number of slides providing a forecast for the next 120 hours or 5 days. This large graphic takes some time to load and while this is happening you get to see each slide in turn, once loaded it runs as an animated gif showing the prediction over the next 5 days. It is updated once a day. If having loaded it you wish to save it to disk, right click on the graphic and then select save picture. The area covered is the entire North Atlantic, however if you look carefully you can see both Bermuda and the Azores and I find that putting a rubber tip of a pencil half way between allows me to relate the chart to the place of interest, without having to look up the coordinates 36N 48W. Click on http://facs.scripps.edu/surf/images/euranim.gif to see it (use your browser back button to return to this page after).
Forecasts
Ocean weather actualsInformation of actuals is available from satellite scans, ships reports and ocean buoys.A good starting point would be one of the following:- Satellite view of North Atlantic at http://www.intellicast.com/LocalWeather/World/UnitedStates/Atlantic/ Larger high resolution shot at http://www.intellicast.com/LocalWeather/World/UnitedStates/AtlanticHIRES/Loop of Atlantic satellite (ie. series of shots) Or try the links below http://polar.wwb.noaa.gov/winds/qnwadata.html North Atlantics surface winds satellite scans http://polar.wwb.noaa.gov/winds/nwassmiwind.html North West Atlantic surface winds satellite scan http://polar.wwb.noaa.gov/winds/nwadata.html North Atlantic index including the 2 above http://dbcp.nos.noaa.gov/dbcp/ data buoy co-operation panel, linking to many others.USA ocean weather forecastsThe major interest the majority of USA forecasting stations have in the Atlantic is to predict hurricanes. These start much further south and go around the High pressure area centered on our selected area. Hurricanes therefore go towards the Caribbean, then turn north running up between the USA and Bermuda, and then if they have not diminished go on around to the east, possibly effecting northern Europe before going south again and possibly effecting the Azores. The larger ones sometimes hit land causing a great deal of damage, hence the interest in predicting them. Below is a few to get you started, there are many more. Atlantic Tropical Weather Center - The ATWC is a one stop source for tracking Atlantic Tropical Hurricanes and Tropical Storms Central Atlantic Storm Investigators - Group of amateur and professional meteorologists and weather observers working to document storms and related weather events Florida State University Meteorology - Tropical information for the Atlantic Basin. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/forecast.html Area covered is largely too far to the south to be of major interest to us, but a very large amount of information and graphics are available.
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