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Old 08-22-2012, 06:17 PM   #1
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New marine weather site

This was announced today on Active Captain. Weather Underground has launched a new marine weather site. It features hourly, daily, and extended marine weather forecasts for locations all over the country if not the planet. I just took a quick look at it for Belllingham.

URL is Sailing Weather | Weather Underground
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Old 08-22-2012, 06:33 PM   #2
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This was announced today on Active Captain. Weather Underground has launched a new marine weather site. It features hourly, daily, and extended marine weather forecasts for locations all over the country if not the planet. I just took a quick look at it for Belllingham.

URL is Sailing Weather | Weather Underground

That should really work well with the Active Captain info included. Here is a site that is good for tracking the different scenarios of tropical storm tracks.

Crown Weather Services - Your One-Stop Weather Information Source
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Old 08-22-2012, 07:25 PM   #3
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I just tried it and it didn't work in my area- Oriental, NC, nor could I log on to Active Captain from WU.

Not ready for Prime Time, IMO.

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Old 08-22-2012, 07:27 PM   #4
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Seems to work fine, here, and I can pan all over the country and call up the weather forecasts everywhere. I'm doing this on an iPad. Haven't tried it on a laptop yet.
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Old 08-22-2012, 07:55 PM   #5
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I just tried it and it didn't work in my area- Oriental, NC, nor could I log on to Active Captain from WU.

Not ready for Prime Time, IMO.

David
It worked great for me. David where have you been? Long time no see. Have you been cruising that Cape Dory?
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Old 08-22-2012, 08:28 PM   #6
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Weather Underground spent all day getting their new section up. It's been in development for over a year. It has full NOAA raster & vector charts (your choice) for the US - the only weather site to provide this. It also integrates all of our data within the weather info in a pretty nice way.

Unlike our website it doesn't use Flash so now iPad's, Android phones, whatever, can access the live data from a website built for millions of people.

It was a frustrating day because they announced their new capability but had some problems bringing it up from the development servers. That doesn't mean it isn't ready. You need to give them a chance to make it all work. Almost every other company announces a new product and then has you wait weeks to months before it's available. Really, is giving them a few days to work out the kinks too much?

Their press release about it can be read here:
http://www.wunderground.com/about/pr...?date=20120821

This is the first major weather site to make a major commitment to integrating and making more boating weather available to us boaters. They have the resources to throw their own staff meteorologists at the raw data to enhance what we normally get from NOAA. Every other site just dumps the NOAA forecast or GFS models and we end up getting mediocre results. What they're doing is really great for boaters everywhere.

Weather Underground was recently acquired by The Weather Channel. The combined capability makes them easily the largest weather organization in the world. I've been working with everyone from the president to the guys who write software - they're a wonderful group who want to make a difference.
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Old 08-22-2012, 08:45 PM   #7
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That's cool. Thanks Jeff.
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Old 08-22-2012, 08:58 PM   #8
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So Jeff, are there any plans to put the "hotspots" for weather on the Active Captain interface for charting programs like Navimatics? We have found Navimatics with the Active Captain overlay to be a terrific planning tool. In fact we just used it this past weekend to learn about and then make reservations for our 17' fishing boat at the tiny marina at Langley on Whidbey Island.

It would be way cool if the Wunderground weather links were overlayed on the Navimatics charts, too, so selecting one would open the Wunderground page for the forecast for that location.
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Old 08-22-2012, 09:06 PM   #9
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Jeff, it's great to have your expertise and contributions here on TF. Thanks for 'filling in the gaps' for us uninitiated nautical types. Years ago, I had serious privacy issues with Wx Underground and never went back. Great to hear that their products are tailored for our uses. Now that you've provided this insight, I'll go back and take another look.
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Old 08-22-2012, 09:10 PM   #10
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Marin, the relationship we formed with WU is pretty deep. There are so many possibilities. You can bet that there is more coming to mash up weather and ActiveCaptain. It's a natural. We've been very quiet about it but there's been a lot in development - much more is coming.

To complete the tease, my goal is the remove all of the manual monitoring and refreshing needed while underway to make navigation and destination decisions. There's actually a lot in that sentence but from a weather perspective, I find myself often refreshing the NOAA forecast when the weather is changing. I remember so many afternoons hitting the refresh key over and over waiting for the next update to come in. That kind of thing is crazy and no pilot should ever have to have their attention taken up by refreshing. Instead, you should have the option of multiple alerts - an icon, a beep, or something talking to you telling you the moment the latest update is available (you choose depending on how critical the update is to your decision making). I call it "eyes free piloting". WU provides so much of the weather component to make that happen. Again, this is just the very beginning.
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Old 08-22-2012, 09:31 PM   #11
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Very cool, what you're doing. I was skeptical of the value of Active Captain for a long time, not because there was anything specific I'd heard about it that I didn't like but because I had the impression from past T&T participation that it was a sort of "east coast" thing.

It was not until we got our iPad earlier this year and then bought the Navimatics application that we decided to see what Active Captain is all about. Not only were we impressed by how much PNW and BC coverage there is, but the value of the information has been proving itself ever since. Our little experience with the Langley marina is just one case in point. The information we got from the Active Captain data on that marina enabled us to have a great weekend with our friends who live on the island. And we will be using the marina in the same way in the future. Win-win for them and us.

So thanks much for what you've done and are continuing to do. I'm glad to hear you are realizing a financial return for your efforts, too.
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Old 08-22-2012, 09:50 PM   #12
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Active Captain is great in the Bahamas also. We were able to check out many anchorages. The marinas are few and far between, so it's great to be able to look at anchorages ahead of time. Thanks, Jeff.
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Old 08-22-2012, 10:07 PM   #13
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It's really not us. The model works and the community needed a place to document their experiences - it's everyone who responded. I just wanted it to be free because that was the only way to get data across the spectrum of boaters. The moment you have to buy something or use a certain type of device/hardware/chartplotter, you're slicing the pie.

It definitely started more on the east coast but has spread pretty nicely through North America. We've got some good data in the UK now too. Our big challenge is the Med - we're 4+ years back there. Garmin will help a lot but another spark is needed.
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