Sailing to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean 1500
Sea State Analysis Charts
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| This is an example of a sea state analysis chart, reduced in size to fit on this page (click the chart to see it actual size, use your browser's "back" command to return here). This chart is for 1200 UTC November 1, 2007 and shows Hurricane Noel heading up the coast. |
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These charts show the significant wave height (in meters) and the dominant wave direction for the North Atlantic, the extreme northern Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico. All the charts are courtesy of the National Climatic Data Center (internet link below).
I have a set of charts covering 1200 UTC November 1, 2007 to 1200 UTC November 20, 2007 (November 18th is missing) with one chart per day. The charts are "GIF" files that run about 150kb to 160kb each. Here's a list of all the charts I have available on my web site; if you want other charts, see the internet link below. By the way, as publications of the U.S. government, these charts are not copyrighted and can be freely copied, see the internet link below.
- Full set of 19 charts in a zip file - Note: 2.7 megabytes! To use this file, download it to your hard disk and unzip the individual charts into a folder. Then double-click on the first chart to open "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" (or similar image browser) and use the cursor keys to step through the charts (put the charts into motion).
- Individual charts are available by downloading any of the files listed below (listed as Year-Month-Day-Hour):
Internet Links For This Section
- Sea State Analysis - To obtain sea state analysis charts for any particular date range, click this link, select "Ocean Analysis", click "Continue", select "Atlantic Sea State Analysis", click "Continue", specify the desired date range, click "Continue", then click each of the provided links one at a time. Once a chart is fully displayed, right-click on the chart, select "Save Picture As...", and specify a location on your hard disk. Then use your browser's "back" command to go back to the list of provided links, and click the next link to get the next chart.
- National Climatic Data Center - to see a list of free downloadable weather maps and charts, click this link, then click the link "Free Data", then on the next page scroll down and click the link "SRRS Weather Maps".
- NOAA Free Data Policy - Explains that the data is public domain and that online data is available for free; this is at the very end of the document. The other statements about recovering cost is if you want to order a data set on CD-ROM; various organizations are exempted from this cost recovery.
