Wind Direction Website

[cruise2020]

For trip planning purposes in my catamaran I was looking for a website that shows typical wind speed and direction for a geographic area. I found plenty of great sites that show current and short term, but what if I wanted to plan my itinerary for say next November? suggestions?

[Bill O]

Welcome aboard cruise2020.

Not knowing your location or where you will sail, the general source for overall historical wind info would be pilot charts. These are mostly for ocean winds (strength and direction). Here is a source: https://msi.nga.mil/Publications/APC

Another good source wind, wave and other info for "now time" or near the time of departure would be windy.com. Different weather models to look at. It can show you the zoom out for an overview or if you zoom in and click on a highlighted city it will give you a lower popup to look at more advanced feature in that particular area. For example if I zoom in and put my cursor on Atlantic City (NJ), USA east coast) and click on it, a more detailed 5 day forecast pops up. On the very bottom of the pop up portion, it may have "Basic" highlighted. If you move it to "Wind" it will show the general wind direction & speed for all models. If you move the time line, you can get a good idea what will happen in the next 5 days. Once in this screen you can hone in on a different area by moving the cursor and left clicking it to that spot.

Play with it for a while, it fairly straight forward for things like wave direction, etc.

[bodgy]

In Australia the Gov weather site gives much more detailed info than the S Pacific pilot. It has much historical data. Quite difficult to navigate to what you want, but its there.

Australia's official weather forecasts & weather radar - Bureau of Meteorology

I would imagine most first world countries have a similar service.

Jon

[cruise2020]

Thanks guys.
Bill - I had been on windy.com, and it is great for short term prediction... and was hoping to find something similar that would provide typical wind speed and direction maybe by month. Objective is to plan a longer trip... one in which but I won't be going upwind the entire time!

This one was pretty good at showing Tropical storm/hurricane by month for the carribean - and their direction/path!

https://www.guidetocaribbeanvacation...s_october.html

Brad

[ChrisJHC]

Once again, telling us where you are located would make answering much easier.

Here is the site for Aus that was mentioned:

http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climat...city/index.jsp

[Bill O]

Brad,
If you are thinking about the Caribbean in November, would look at the pilot charts (link I sent previously) for planning purposes for wind direction and strength. (North Atlantic: once on the Nov. page scroll down to see an enlarged chart for the Caribbean)

While you can't rule out a hurricane in November, chances are much lower especially in the leeward and windward islands.

[requiem]

Ah, you are in luck! Just the other week I saw mention of this site: https://www.prevailing-winds.de/

Data is from the Copernicus ERA5 dataset, over the past five years.

[BaccaSean]

Originally Posted by requiem

Ah, you are in luck! Just the other week I saw mention of this site: https://www.prevailing-winds.de/

Data is from the Copernicus ERA5 dataset, over the past five years.

This is superb, thank you for sharing!

[StuM]

Originally Posted by requiem

Ah, you are in luck! Just the other week I saw mention of this site: https://www.prevailing-winds.de/

Data is from the Copernicus ERA5 dataset, over the past five years.

Great! Not quite as comprehenive as the previous Oregon State site at Climatology of Global Ocean Winds (QuikSCAT). When that site went down, DeepZoom Global Ocean Winds was a good alternative until they screwed that one up totally when they re-designed it a year or two ago.

Now we've got another source for historical winds. Hope it stays up longer than the last two

[StuM]

Here's one that i had bookmarked but had forgotten about. that I had forgotten about!

https://www.pitufa.at/oceanwinds/

A worthy successor to COGOW and based on the same data

[BaccaSean]

Thanks for sharing this as well, Stu!

[gonesail]

windy is a very good site. https://www.windy.com

[StuM]

Originally Posted by gonesail

windy is a very good site. https://www.windy.com

But not for history data (similar to Pilot Charts) which the OP asked for.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, cruise2020.
As Bill O posted, the Atlas of Pilot Charts is your source for historical ocean winds, by month.
➥ https://msi.nga.mil/Publications/APC