Text a Buoy

Even though we've been at the whole cruising thing for a really long time, every once in awhile I get completely gobsmacked by something I didn't know and this week was one of those. Did you know that if you don't have internet but you do have phone service that you can text a buoy number to the system and they will return the buoy data to your phone? Here's an example:

For buoys in the Southeast:

Text 843-603-8559 with the number of the buoy you want the information for and press send. You can get the list of buoys at this site:

https://secoora.org/text-a-buoy/

Here's an example of the text that I tested the system with:

Here's one from just offshore of Tampa Bay that shows wave height:

For Great Lakes Buoy Reports:

In your message box, enter the buoy ID number from one of the buoys listed below. Only buoys with numeric names can be texted. Example: Ludington Buoy: 45024. Depending on the buoy, some of the information available is as follows:

• Wind speed
• Wind location
• Surface water temperature
• Water temperature at depth (Certain buoys)
• Air temperature
• Wave height

 

LAKE MICHIGAN
Buoy ID	Location
45002	North Lake Michigan
45007	South Lake Michigan
45013	Milwaukee Atwater Park
45014	South Green Bay
45020	Grand Traverse Bay South
45022	Little Traverse Bay
45024	Ludington
45026	Cook Nuclear Plant
45029	Port Sheldon
45161	Muskegon
45168	South Haven
45170	Michigan City Buoy
45174	Wilmette
45175	Mackinac Straits West
45182	Milwaukee Atwater Park
45183	Sleeping Bear
45184	Green Bay East
45185	Green Bay West
45186	Waukegan
45187	Winthrop
PA-DEP-1538	PA-DEP-1538
SPOT-0648	SPOT-0648 Ludington
SPOT-0700	SPOT-0700 Little Traverse Bay

 

LAKE SUPERIOR
Buoy ID	Location
45001	Mid Superior
45004	East Superior
45006	West Superior
45023	North Entry
45025	South Entry Buoy
45027	McQuade Harbor
45028	Duluth
45136	Slate Island
45171	Granite Island
45172	Grand Marais
45173	Munising
45179	Stannard Rock

 

LAKE ERIE
Buoy ID	Location
45005	West Lake Erie
45132	Northern Lake Erie
45142	Port Colborne
45164	Cleveland DO
45165	Toledo Water Intake
45167	Erie Nearshore
45169	Cleveland Wind
45176	Cleveland Intake Crib
BGSUSD2	Sandusky Bay
ESF3	Dunkirk
WE2	Western Erie 2
WE4	Western Erie 4
WE8	Western Erie 8
WE13	Western Erie 13
OSUGI	Gibralter Island
UTLCP	Little Cedar Point
uwss-raeon1	UWSS RAEON Buoy 1
uwss-raeon2	UWSS RAEON Buoy 2
uwraeon1	UWindsor RAEON Buoy 1
uwraeon4	UWindsor RAEON Buoy 4
uwraeon2	UWindsor RAEON Buoy 2
uwraeon3	UWindsor RAEON Buoy 3

 

LAKE HURON
Buoy ID	Location
45003	North Lake Huron
45008	South Central Lake Huron
45137	Georgian Bay
45143	South Georgian Bay
45149	Southern Lake Huron
45154	North Channel East
45162	Alpena Thunder Bay

 

LAKE ONTARIO
Buoy ID	Location
45012	East Ontario
45135	Prince Edward Pt
45139	West Lake Ontario
45159	Northwest Ontario
ESF1	Oswego
ESF2	Sodus Bay South
ESF5	Sodus Bay Center
ESF8	Sodus Point Nearshore Monitoring Buoy
ESF9	Oak Ochard Nearshore Monitoring Buoy
OMOECC_O1	Western Ontario
OMOECC_O2	Western Ontario 2
45189	Oswego

 

OTHER LAKES
Buoy ID	Location
45147	Lake St Clair

If you have phone service you can also call Dial-a-Buoy for a report. Here is an exerpt from the NDBC Site

Dial-A-Buoy

Call Dial-A-Buoy at 888-701-8992 or 301-713-9620

What is Dial-A-Buoy?

Dial-A-Buoy gives mariners an easy way to obtain weather reports when away from a computer/the Internet. Wind and wave measurements taken within the last hour at buoy and coastal weather stations operated by NDBC and a growing number of Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) partners can be heard using a cell phone. NDBC, a part of the National Weather Service (NWS), created Dial-A-Buoy in 1997. In 2007, NDBC and the National Ocean Service's Center for Operational Ocean Products and Services (NOS/CO-OPS) jointly implemented a replacement for the original system which had operated well beyond its expected life cycle. The new system is an extension of the Great Lakes Online service that NOS/CO-OPS is expanding to include its National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON) stations.

Large numbers of boaters use the observations, in combination with forecasts, to make decisions on whether it is safe to venture out. Some even claim that the reports have saved lives. Surfers use the reports to see if wave conditions are, or will soon be, promising. Many of these boaters and surfers live well inland, and knowing the conditions has saved them many wasted trips to the coast.

Buoy reports include wind direction, speed, gust, significant wave height, swell and wind-wave heights and periods, air temperature, water temperature, and sea level pressure. Some buoys report wave directions. Coastal weather stations report the winds, air temperature, and pressure; some also report wave information, water temperature, visibility, and dew point.

How do I use Dial-A-Buoy?

To access Dial-A-Buoy, dial 888-701-8992 using any touch tone or cell phone. Assuming you know the identifier of the station whose report you need, press "1". In response to the prompt, enter the five-digit (or character) station identifier. (For coastal stations whose identifiers contain both letter characters and numbers, use the number key containing the letter - for the letter "Q", press "7"; for "Z", press "9"; etc.) The system will ask you to confirm that your entry was correct by pressing "1". After a few seconds, you will hear the latest buoy or C-MAN observation read via computer-generated voice. At the end, the system will prompt you to press "1" to hear the report again, or "2" to continue with other options.

Dial-A-Buoy also can read the latest NWS marine forecast for most station locations. The system will prompt you to press "2" to continue after the observation is read, then "1" to hear the forecast. You can jump to the forecast before the end of the station report by pressing "21" during the reading of the station conditions.

When you are finished with Dial-A-Buoy, press 9 or simply hang-up!

There are several ways to find the station locations and identifiers. For Internet users, maps showing buoy locations are given at the NDBC Website. Telephone users can press "2" at the beginning of the call to be prompted for a latitude and longitude and receive the closest station locations and identifiers.

When you become familiar with the system, you do not have to wait for the prompts. For example, you can press "1420071" as soon as you begin to hear the welcome message to hear the report from station 42007.

How Does Dial-A-Buoy Work?

The Dial-A-Buoy system does not actually dial into a buoy or C-MAN station. The phone calls are answered by a computer that controls the dialog and reads the observations and forecasts from NDBC's web site.

What are some problems with Dial-A-Buoy?

How do I enter characters for a Station Identifier? Characters are entered simply by pressing the key containing the character. For Q, press "7", and for Z, press "9". For example, to enter CHLV2, press the keys 24582.

How do I quit Dial-A-Buoy? Simply hang-up.

How do I hear the observations for another station? When you are finished hearing the observation or forecast, the system will prompt you to press "1" to hear it again or '2' to continue. The second option will be to press "2" to enter a new station identifier. You can jump to the new station prompt before the end of the station report by pressing "221" during the reading of the station conditions.

If you press 22 at most points in the call, Dial-A-Buoy will take you back to the beginning dialog.

The complete list of buoys is on this map.

This is an amazing resource for sailors of all kinds and one I wish I had known about a lot sooner!

The Thrill is Gone

The past few years of cruising, weather decisions have been made incredibly easy due to the entrance of the Storm weather app to the market in February of 2015. We were so impressed with it that I did a post about it, King of the Weather Apps. The Storm app enabled us to ditch a half dozen other apps because it had all the capabilities under one roof: daily and 7-day forecasts, marine zone forecasting, tropical storm warnings and tracks, a kick-ass radar, lightning, wind prediction...you want it, it had it. But like a not-so-new teenage crush, or that zippy sports car that acquires its first ding, Storm began to lose its luster. First off, the marine forecasting  - even though it was offered under a subscription - was dropped. Then, a few months later, every time you opened the app it had an ad for the new Storm Radar app. A few months later it was no longer an option, but a mandatory upgrade. As of May 23rd, the Storm app will no longer be supported and only the Storm Radar will continue.

Storm was originally hosted by Weather Underground, a service originating from the University of Michigan in 1995. Even though The Weather Channel acquired Weather Underground in 2012, Storm was released in February of 2015 under the Weather Underground name. Storm was the app that TWC was using for its forecasting and tracking. In fact, that's where I first found out about it, while watching TWC tracking a hurricane. My only guess is that they didn't want everyone else having access to the same info (and therefore not needing TWC to interpret it for them) so they released the much less capable Storm Radar app and discontinued support for the Storm app.

In the already frustrating environment of Garmin's takeover of Active Captain and Navionics, the loss of Storm hits the cruising community hard. The information is not lost It's still all out there through NOAA (since that's where all apps get their input from anyway,) but it's not in an easy-to-use condensed format. It requires much more digging, and much more internet usage to get the same information, and nearly every cruiser finds internet bandwidth to be their most valuable currency. So what are we to do?

Some have elected to purchase subscriptions to weather routers like Chris Parker. He offers a great service to a good many people and I'm grateful he's there. But for former pilots like Tim and I, who have always done our own weather, it's not an option. We want to do our own forecasting and be responsible for our own weather decisions. I've spent the last few days while we're stuck in Marathon waiting on a weather window, to research all the options. A discussion of them follows. If you have any additional information or sources that might be helpful, please leave it in the comments below.

General Forecast Information:

1. NOAA's New Experimental Forecast Chart: This is probably the best replacement alternative to the Storm App. Their new interactive map allows you to pan and zoom, and to click on your location on the chart for a detailed forecast. The chart looks like this: 
   
   
   
   You can see where I clicked on the Marathon area where we are located. When you click on the More Information link in the block, you get a wide variety of forecasting tools, charts, and maps all for your specific area.
   
   
2. Weather Underground: Still one of the best general weather forecast sites. Typical radar, 10-day forecasts, precip, etc.
3. Weather Bug: Same info, nicer layout, better radar.
4. The Weather Channel (weather.com): Almost exactly the same format and news stories as Weather Underground, not surprising since they own them.
5. Accuweather
6. Intellicast

Marine Specific Forecasts:

1. NOAA's Marine Forecast Home Page: This page gives you a wealth of information. You can get the coastal zone forecasts, the offshore zone forecasts, and the high seas forecasts by clicking on the zone block on the map. Here is the Coastal map:
   
   
   
   
   Once you click on the zone you want (in my case the South zone,) it will take you to the next page for that specific forecast.
   
   
   
   
   Continuing deeper, I clicked the Key West Zone and this is the next map:
   
   
   
   
   And, finally, I clicked on the Hawk Channel just outside Marathon to see what the conditions will be like for the next few days. Here is the forecast:
   
   
   
   
   If you click on the link in the lower right corner "Forecast Discussion," you will get a text discussion for the area which can be very helpful in discerning trends. Here is the discussion for this forecast: 
   

The same procedure is applied to get the Offshore Forecasts and the High Seas Forecasts.

The cat's meow, though, is a very cool interactive graphical forecast map for when you have adequate internet bandwidth. Using the drop-down menu in the upper lefthand corner you can get a forecast map for any of the following parameters:

Maximum Temperature (°F)
Minimum Temperature (°F)
Prob of Precipitation (%)
Precipitation Potential Index (%) experimental
Weather
Hazards
Temperature (°F)
Apparent Temperature (°F)
Dew Point (°F)
Relative Humidity (%)
Wind Speed (kts)
Wind Gusts (kts)
Wind Direction
Sky Cover (%)
Precip Amount (in)
Snow Amount (in)
Ice Accumulation (in)
Total New Precip (in)
Total New Snow (in)
Total New Ice (in)
Snow or Sleet > 0.25in LE, Prob.(%)
Marine
Wave Height (ft)
Fire Weather
Maximum Relative Humidity (%)
Minimum Relative Humidity (%)
Dry Thunderstorms
Critical Fire Weather
Severe Weather
Convective Outlook
Tornado Probability(%)
Extreme Tornado Prob.(%)
Damaging T-storm Wind Prob.(%)
Extreme T-storm Wind Prob.(%)
Hail Probability(%)
Extreme Hail Prob.(%)
Total Prob. Severe T-Storms(%)
Total Prob. Extreme T-Storms(%)
Tropical
Tropical Wind >34kts (Cumulative Prob)
Tropical Wind >50kts (Cumulative Prob)
Tropical Wind >64kts (Cumulative Prob)
Tropical Wind >34kts (Incremental Prob.)
Tropical Wind >50kts (Incremental Prob.)
Tropical Wind >64kts (Incremental Prob.)
Hurricane Wind Threat
Hurricane Storm Surge Threat
Hurricane Flooding Rain Threat
Hurricane Tornado Threat
Water Resources
Daily FRET (in)
Daily FRET Departure from Normal (in)
Total Weekly FRET (in)

There's a lot of other marine specific forecast pages and apps that you can use as well. Most are very specific in the information that they cover. Here is a list of the popular ones, although not comprehensive I'm sure.

1. Passage Weather (Free - donation suggested)
2. Predict Wind (Free or subscription), website or apps on both iOS or Android
3. Wind Guru (Free or subscription) website or apps on both iOS or Android
4. Sailflow (Free or subscription) website or apps on both iOS or Android
5. Windy (Free) website or apps on both iOS or Android
6. Earth.Nullschool.net very cool and free

Grib Forecast Apps:

1. Pocket Grib (Initial cost) website or apps on both iOS or Android
2. Predict Wind (Free GRIB viewer)

Prog Charts:

Because we have an aviation background, we use prog charts to help our forecasting. Prog charts are surface charts that span several days. It helps to see how the fronts move over the time period to understand the progression of the weather. You can get them at the Aviation Weather Center at the link below.

Prog Charts

Hurricane Tracking:

1. The definitive hurricane tracking site is NOAA's National Hurricane Center. It's also available on both iOS and Android as an app. While there's other sites out there doing it, they're all getting the info from NOAA so the NOAA Now app is the industry standard.
2. Mike's Weather Page
3. Tropical Tidbits

Hurricane Prep:

1. Boat US has a fairly comprehensive site with hurricane prep information, including an assortment of checklists and guides.
2. A blank copy of our insurance hurricane plan the year we were planning on being at two different locations over the hurricane season.

Weather Routing Services

1. Fast Seas
2. Chris Parker Weather Routing
3. Weather Routing, Inc.

Other helpful weather information:

1. How to read surface charts
2. Cloud types and their significance
3. An interesting article on the demise of the weather frontal map