NZ Marine weather sites/apps

[Pewit 0]

Apart from NZ marine, and the usual world apps like PredictWind, WinAlert etc. Are there any NZ websites or apps for accurate and easily digestible wind forecasts?

 

Also are there any sources of tide data for the Hauraki Gulf?

 

thanks

 

Paul

[harrytom 648]

windyty i find useful 

 

www.windytv.com

[ScottiE 174]

www.metvuw.com is pretty good

[wild violet 38]

For tide direction and strength i use navionics charts they are very good for weather metservice is usually not too bad.i have got predictwind but have found it worse than useless.

[ScottiE 174]

Geez really - how so? I've always found it pretty reasonable

[wild violet 38]

Tried to get to fiordland down west coast in feb predictwind was so wrong it was ridiculous dangerous in fact standard metservice marine was a lot more accurate rest of the boats heading down said the same thing.i got sick of waiting so went down east coast predictwing was a joke there as well

[wheels 543]

Like all computers, the out put info can only ever be as good as the input. The issue is that none of these weather sites have their own sats up there buzzing planet earth. Add to that, the fact that cyclonic weather patterns are terribly hard to predict. They are not like the normal weather fronts that come up from under the Country. These things affect all the weather fronts and they also are hard to predict the path of. A cyclonic patterns centre only needs to change by a few 10's of Ks to bring a totally different wind over the Country. So the weather during the Seasonal changes, especially when we get the much bigger Cyclonic patterns spinning down this way, is so hard to predict out accurately.

Speaking of boats going down to Fiordland, I have a friend that turned up in Havelock on that huge Cat. They too, were heading to Fiordland and were about to leave the next day and I said, err....have you seen the cyclone we have coming over us in the couple of days? They were using predict wind also.