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2024 Winter Weather Webinar for Blue Water Mariners - Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (TAFB)
NOAA/NWS National Hurricane Center
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1231 visualizaciones 23 ene 2025
Chris Landsea, the Branch Chief of the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch at the National Hurricane Center, provided a winter weather webinar for blue water mariners on December 13, 2024. Moderated by NHC/TAFB Meteorologist Brian Adams.
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NOAA/National Weather Service
National Hurricane Center
Miami, FL
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0:00
for me to tell you a little bit about what we do at the National Hurricane Center in our marine branch and so my
0:07
name is Chris Lancy I'm the branch chief of 16 Marine forecasters that that are
0:12
busy yearround making wind and wave forecasts issuing wind-based warnings for the Caribbean the gulf uh the West
0:20
Atlantic and the East Pacific so we have 10 million square nautical miles so it's a big chunk of ocean um and uh and so
0:28
I'm going to be able to to explain a little bit about our our mission a little bit about the tools we have uh
0:34
show some of the products uh and then talk a little bit about our relationship with the US Coast Guard um so to put
0:42
what we're doing in perspective of of our organization uh tap b is the largest
0:47
part of the National Hurricane Center uh the National Hurricane Center has 60
0:52
employees most are are federal employees um and we're one of nine
0:58
National centers for Environmental prediction another one is the Ocean Prediction Center and so for those of
1:03
you who listened in on Darren fery's talk that's one of the other EPS um we're all part of the National
1:10
Weather Service uh which is the largest part of Noah National Oceanic and
1:15
Atmospheric Administration so you probably know of Noah Fisheries or the national ocean Service as an example and
1:23
we're all in Department of Commerce and uh and you might say that's that's a little odd so let's let's take
1:29
a let's blow that up a little bit here and take a look at that logo for Department of Commerce so right in the
1:37
middle is a sailing ship and on the bottom is is a lighthouse and this has been around a
1:44
long time for this logo but it really points to the importance of the weather and
1:51
forecast uh to keep Mariners safe um because of its important
1:57
non-commerce and uh and so I always thought that's really cool when you drill down and look at our our logo for
2:03
Department of Commerce so Noah itself has made its number three strategic goal
2:10
to accelerate growth in an information-based blue economy and that's
2:16
because the blue economy is massive you know for tourism Recreation uh defense
2:21
offshore oil and gas Transportation Fisheries ship building power generation construction research it's it's massive
2:29
uh and so the this is a huge diverse uh industry that's focused on the ocean uh
2:36
and another aspect is trading so 80% of all Goods traded globally are on ships
2:43
not airplanes not trucks not trains but ships and so so it's a huge part of the
2:49
US economy and so the more we can do to help people stay safe over the open
2:54
ocean as well as to make make it a little more efficient you know what's the best route for example that ships
3:01
may want to take uh to not only stay safe but best economic uh decisions for
3:07
not burning as much fuel so when we're making forecasts we're doing that under the opes of not
3:15
just the United States national weather service but also through the international Maritime organization so
3:22
the IMO is part of the United Nations and it was founded after the sinking of the Titanic when it was realized that
3:29
the Global oceans there's people from every country out there and you want to be able to have them stay safe and so
3:36
the IMO was founded to Pro help provide free forecasts of winds and waves and
3:42
warnings and so the United States actually has the Northeast Pacific here
3:47
as well as the North Atlantic um and you can see other countries have other parts of the world they provide those
3:54
forast uh how we do this within the Weather Service really it's broken down
3:59
G graphically uh that within 60 miles of the coast you can see that uh kind of
4:05
pink ribbon in the Gulf the Atlantic and the Pacific that's the province of the
4:11
local weather forecast offices or wfos uh and so further out from that uh
4:17
the blue shows the offshores by the Ocean Prediction Center uh the dark
4:22
blues that is and our offshores are the the dark greens and our high seas are
4:28
the the lighter colors there uh and so we're going to focus today on on what we do in tap b some of the meteorological
4:35
hazards some of the products show you some of the products so that you can become better acquainted with these and
4:40
and help you make better decisions when you're over the open ocean so one thing that shocked me when
4:46
I was taking this position six years ago is how many giant vessels there are out
4:54
there uh you can go to a website marinetraffic.com where the transponders
4:59
on those that are linked to satellites so that if a ship gets in trouble it
5:04
pushes the button and uh the local Coast Guard can come come help them and so this website actually shows all those
5:11
public transponders doesn't show the military ones but the green are cargo ships uh the purple are giant personal
5:18
Yachts uh the orange are fishing boats uh the red are oil tankers uh the blue
5:24
are tugs and special craft working the oil platforms and even up the Mississippi River you can see all these
5:30
vessels um going up the Mississippi so and this doesn't account for the smaller
5:36
vessels either uh the recreational boers that uh that are going out for the day
5:41
but it's amazing how many thousands and thousands of vessels are out on the global ocean every day so we're hoping
5:48
people are using our forecast and this time of year uh even though it's not
5:53
hurricane season anymore thank goodness uh there are hazards that one has to uh
5:59
to de deal with whether it's extreme winds uh very large wind waves or very
6:04
large swell uh there's also fog that occurs in Northern Gulf um in winter and
6:10
spring and so we want to make sure that you know what those hazards are and and
6:16
plan accordingly for your your ship's voice Voyage so what I'm showing here are areas in the winter and spring that
6:24
can get gale force so that's 34 knots of course uh or stronger conditions and the
6:30
yellow shows where we get these Gales occasionally uh and the red shows where we get them very
6:36
frequently uh so let me go into a little more detail on these because it's important if you're going to be for
6:42
example going along the Mexican Riviera uh to know what those hazards are uh at
6:48
the uh closest to California just off of Baja California and in the Gulf of
6:53
California it's fairly common for extratropical Cyclones uh or winter
6:59
storm along with the cold fronts uh to produce a gale force usually Northerly or
7:05
northwesterlies uh and the same thing in the northern Gulf of California you can get some Gale Forest northwesterlies uh
7:12
in the Gulf of California uh as you progress equatorward hazards are a little less sometimes you get
7:19
enhancements uh of the Winds because of funneling around that curve of Southwestern Mexico and then in the Gulf
7:25
of tanek is a huge Hot Spot very very common for us to to have Gales uh just two days ago we had a
7:32
storm Force event which is 48 knots or greater and this is called by cold fronts that progress across the Gulf of
7:40
Mexico and that very dense uh heavy air um pushes across the sier Madre
7:47
orientees of Mexico and there's a gap called the chel pass and so very very
7:53
common strong cold from you get that cold air going across that Peninsula and
7:58
reaching the Gulf of tantek and so very common to have Gale even storm Force we've actually recorded
8:05
two hurricane force wind events in the Gulf of tanip in the last 20 years continuing further south and east uh
8:12
near the Gulf of Papagayo in Nicaragua uh fairly common to have Gales there uh
8:18
rare to have them in Gulf of Panama but they have been recorded then you get into the Caribbean Sea uh because of the
8:26
interactions of the Bermuda high that a semi permanent up near Bermuda along
8:31
with this semi-permanent Colombian low causes uh in in conjunction with the
8:37
very high terrain of of Northern Columbia very strong winds along the ABC islands and just north of Columbia very
8:45
common to have Gales there occasionally we have Gales in the Northwest Caribbean in the in the Gulf of Honduras uh very
8:54
common to have Gales in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico again due to cold fronts here and the funneling of the Winds
9:01
along the high terrain of the Sierra modre Orient there uh and then we can
9:06
have some Gales in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispanola as well as
9:12
Gales just off of Florida so lots of Hazards and as you can see a lot of these are tied to land um so sometimes
9:19
if you're further offshore the conditions are better um for these features that are linked to the
9:27
topography so the ways that we forecast starts with our observations so that's
9:33
in our toolkit and we use a mix of both insitu or local observations as well as
9:39
remote sensed information uh we're very fortunate that National data buoy Center maintains uh an array of mored buoys
9:47
that are anchored to the ocean floor and they give us winds and waves uh continuously uh from those platforms uh
9:55
there's also drifting buoys uh Noah has contracted with the company so far to get uh their those drifting buoys to
10:02
give us wave heights and they're they're really spot-on measurements uh there's also ships over the open ocean and I'll
10:09
go into that detail next uh that give us in critical information about winds and
10:14
waves and pressure to supplement that we have uh remote sensed information from
10:20
satellites and so this this swath here of colored wind barbs uh that's from a
10:26
radar in space called a scatterometer United States we don't have any scatterometers right now but fortunately
10:33
the European Space Agency maintains three of them uh two of them and they got a third one planned and so we get
10:39
the observations from that there's another set of Radars in space called a altimeter and this gives us accurate
10:46
wave heights to the nearest Foot uh from space and so these are nice uh swaths
10:54
that we get and they move around every day so it's not covering the same spot of the gulf the Caribbean or the West
11:01
Atlantic so we still have gaps um but it's a nice mix of of measurements for
11:06
us I did want to really hype up the uh voluntary observing ship program or Voss
11:12
this is a global program through the world meterological organization to encourage commercial vessels uh to
11:19
provide their observations the more measurements we get as forecasters the
11:25
better the computer models are and better situational awareness that we have for nasty conditions over the open
11:32
ocean you cannot assume that if you're on a a big oil tanker for example and
11:37
you're getting beat up by 40 knots of wind that we know about it we need you we need you all to tell tell us so if
11:43
you're not your company's not part of Voss uh please reach out to Mike pachy
11:48
at the Voss program another huge tool for us are the satellite images and so we have a
11:55
combination of polar orbiting satellites that go around the Earth Earth at low uh
12:00
low orbit Heights as well as the geostationary that uh that see are Blue
12:06
Marble from space uh watching the same patch of of ocean and land all the time
12:12
so since we're tropical meteorologists often we're seeing the incipient tropical storms and hurricanes with
12:17
satellites but even cold fronts like this example shows is is a really uh
12:23
helpful for us to determining where the features are that are causing the winds and waves
12:29
and then the last set of Mo of tools for us to put together our forecasts are the
12:34
global wind and wave models so there are Global models that
12:39
provide winds and waves all over the Earth uh and then there's also Regional models but because we have 10 million
12:46
square nautical miles we generally use Global models and we uh we take a mix of
12:51
the global forecast system GFS that the National Weather Service runs as well as
12:56
the European Center for medum range weather forecast casting or ecmwf and so we will'll take those and
13:03
blend them together to come up with an optimal forecast solution and then we we
13:08
do run one model locally it's the only model we run locally it's a wave model and it's based on the Nearshore wave
13:14
prediction system and so this gives us consistent wind waves and swell to match
13:20
the wind forcing from our forecast so we always make sure it's a consistent set of wind and waves uh that you're be
13:26
getting in our predictions and then lastly uh the tool that we use to put all that
13:31
together is called the advanced weather interactive processing system or a whips where it's got everything it's got the
13:38
satellite pictures it's got radar it's got the ships it's got the computer models it's got a database and that
13:45
allows us to put together our forecast of our text our graphics and the the
13:50
grids themselves are a a forecast that someone can access so it's really helpful we don't want to go to 30
13:56
different websites to do our job it just would not work very well all right so let's uh take a look
14:02
at some of the products so that's a bit about our mission and some of the tools we're using uh let's look at some of the
14:08
forecasts but before we make a forecast we start with an analysis uh it's a
14:13
weather map and it's called the unified surface analysis and four different agencies help put it together we do the
14:20
little attitudes of the uh the Atlantic and the Pacific uh the Central Pacific is done by the forecasters lucky enough
14:27
to work in Honolulu the Ocean Prediction Center does the high latitudes of the Pacific and the Atlantic and the weather
14:34
prediction center does Alaska Canada and the United States but apparently they don't realize
14:40
Florida's part of the United States because we end up doing it um and if you live in Florida a while you're like yeah
14:46
it's kind of right it's we do things differently here in Florida so let's take a look at what the weather map is today so U uh Mr Mike T ticket check did
14:55
the weather map for today and uh let's bring that up it's
15:08
trying well if this doesn't work then I may skip to that part of the show and of
15:14
course I did try this before and it worked
15:24
[Music] fine all right I'm just going to restart
15:29
the PowerPoint so there's Mike's map from 12z today um and you can see we've
15:36
got a uh stationary front in our Waters south of 31 north latitude uh there's
15:42
also a very high amplitude or a very pronounced trough going from the Lesser an tiles up to just east of Bermuda uh
15:50
and a weak low embedded on that uh so fairly typical uh developing Gale uh is
15:56
indicated by the Ocean Prediction Center that's going to start with in 24 hours all right so let's uh bring this
16:04
back up all right so that's the unified surface analysis uh we also have a
16:11
tropical weather discussion and so this is a free form text product basically you get inside the the forecaster brain
16:18
about what the he or she is predicting and the way we've got it set up is one
16:24
set for the Atlantic one for the Pacific we issue it four times a day and at the top we focus on the Big Stuff any
16:30
warnings that are in place for winds uh any very large swell of at least 12 foot
16:35
uh seas and uh see if we can access this ah now it's working so here's the
16:42
tropical weather discussion that Mr tick put together and in this case we do have
16:47
Gale Forest winds or forecast to occur uh along with some very large swell and
16:53
so he's focused on that uh and then further south um actually we go go all
16:59
the way to Africa and in this case we're we're mentioning Meo France has a gale warning in place as well uh and then we
17:07
break it up geographically the Gulf of Mexico one or two paragraphs about what's going on now and then a paragraph
17:14
from from our synopsis in our offshore zones talks about the forecast in a broad brush way same thing for the
17:21
Caribbean and same thing for the uh the tropical Western Atlantic as well
17:29
so the rest of our information we provide are are comes right out of our grids and so this is grided information
17:37
of winds and waves and warnings and and weather um and it fuels our Graphics uh
17:44
fuels our text products and the grids themselves are available as products so if you have a grip reader you can uh
17:50
take a look at our grids directly that way um so the grids it's worth talking
17:56
about this a little bit in detail they're Fair fairly uh fine resolution both in t in space and time uh in space
18:03
it's a 10 km or 6 nautical mile resolution and it goes out to six days
18:09
uh out uh three hourly for the first three days and then uh four times a day
18:15
out to day six and we provide winds that are at uh we call them surface winds uh
18:21
but they're at 10 meters above the ocean along with Gus uh and 10 meters uh for
18:26
those aren't metric that's it's about 4 ft um significant wave height and and
18:32
any hazards so any warnings that are in place now in the past how you got your
18:39
weather forecast really depended on a how close you were to the coast and B
18:44
what technology had on board and I know that's changing real fast and so uh so
18:49
I'm going to uh talk a little bit about that especially at the end about where we're going as an agency uh for for our
18:56
marine forecast over the open ocean um but certainly it's worth pointing out near the coast you have no wether radio
19:03
further from Shore you have both uh graphical and voice broadcasts you also
19:08
have the text forecast from navtex uh and then aridium and in maret you have
19:14
text forast of the hurricane predictions and our high seas uh and for low
19:19
bandwidth um FTP mail had been a standard for the uh the cruise Community
19:24
for for a long time but again I I know it's all changing very very fast so we
19:30
want to keep up one of the traditional Tex products is the one mandated by the
19:36
international Maritime organization uh and it's our high seas and uh and so
19:41
this is um admittedly a little hard to read uh this is the forecast I issued
19:47
just a few minutes ago talking about that gale warning that's going to be between the Bahamas and Bermuda uh and
19:53
so so we realize people aren't reading anymore and they want more graphical or
19:59
or video information so so we're going to continue providing the the high seas forecast uh we do it mainly automated
20:06
now it's going to be completely automated in a couple years uh a Tex product that I think is more useful and
20:13
should remain useful in the future are offshore zones and so this goes out through five days it's got a resolution
20:19
of day and night and it provides wind uh wave heights uh in any swell uh and what
20:25
direction that swell is coming from as well as any warnings whether it's tropical storm or hurricane warnings or
20:32
or winter Gales or storms and for each of these uh little shapes these polygons there's a separate forecast uh so I
20:40
could show you the forecast I did today hopefully it'll verify pretty well um and so so this is our interface and uh
20:47
and so if you go up to here you can see the Gail warning that I issued uh a couple hours ago where we're expecting
20:55
uh winds up to 35 knots on Saturday and with it sees 10 to 16 feet uh in
21:01
combination of wind waves and Northeast to East swell so pretty nasty conditions
21:06
between the Bermuda and the Bahamas over the next couple days so this is again it's a quick and easy way to take a look
21:13
at forecast uh of what you may be going through uh or will be going
21:19
through we have the same for the East Pacific so that whole uh uh shipping
21:25
line from California past Mexico meico Central America through the Panama Canal
21:31
and over to the Galapagos Islands same kind of information out through 5 days uh day and night uh let's just take a
21:38
quick look because I think it's worth showing uh so here's the uh East Pac gooey that
21:45
we have available and uh so if we look at the tantek event uh which is had been
21:51
a gale force uh so this forecast was put together by Elizabeth Adams and she does
21:57
not have a Gil anymore more so fortunately folks that we're waiting to go through that passage uh can now
22:03
proceed as the the Gale has has has ended uh at least for now but next week
22:08
it's going to come back again no doubt so uh radio facts um has been kind
22:16
of the backbone of the over open ocean uh forecast information uh for decades
22:23
and it's been a great uh Tool uh it's something that the US Coast Guard works with us they maintain these these
22:29
highfrequency transmitters so you can get graphical products over the open ocean by radio technology so uh I'm
22:37
gonna have a couple quizzes here uh who here um still uses radio facts you with
22:43
a radio uh receiver U go ahead put in the chat if you do uh or don't uh so yes
22:52
I still use radiox or no I've not used radiox don't use it any longer
22:59
uh so Brian's going to be monitoring that uh but feel free I'd like to get an idea does anyone um any Mariners that
23:06
are listening today do are you using radio facts Brian what are we getting let's see so far Rob Murray has
23:13
chimed in saying yes he does and then we're just waiting on some other responses okay all right well that's
23:19
good to know that still has some use uh out there um so I'm going to show a couple of the uh the graphics here uh so
23:27
one that's produced couple times a day one set for the Caribbean the Atlantic and Gulf as well as one set for the East
23:33
Pacific are our surface progs and on here it's got the sea level uh pressures
23:39
and these isobars and any features uh so during Hurricane Season obviously be tropical storm hurricanes that would be
23:46
consistent with what the hurricane specialist unit is doing across the hall uh and this time of year it's more
23:51
frontal boundaries and troughs so let's take a quick look uh this is from last
23:56
night's forecast that was a put together by uh uh Karen Rado Vasquez and you can
24:02
see some pretty strong packing of the isobars so very likely to have strong to
24:08
near Gale conditions uh north of the Bahamas uh and then you've got this pronounced
24:14
trough not likely to become a a tropical storm uh this time of year but certainly
24:20
is causing some impactful weather North of the Bahamas right now uh so that's an
24:25
example for the surface progs we also have uh an analysis of what the waves
24:30
are doing so we do significant wave heights and and it also shows the
24:36
direction that the dominant wave is coming from and the values you can see the individual numbers they're in
24:43
feet uh most of our users over the open ocean are international and they tell us
24:49
what are feet feet are something we put our shoes on and so they want meters and
24:54
so while we're going to continue to do the offshores with waves in feet our
25:01
Graphics are going to switch to meters for wave heights as well as our uh high seas forecast are going to switch to to
25:08
to meters um and so that's uh that's where we're responding to to the
25:13
international customers that use this information uh a forecast of the Winds
25:19
and waves are provided by our windwave forecast graphics and I should have mentioned that all of these Graphics are
25:24
on our website as well and so that's uh uh if you're no longer using uh radioa
25:30
uh right off of our website and that's how I'm pulling them up right now similarly these are done twice a day uh
25:36
and it's done for day one day two and day three uh one set for the Atlantic Caribbean and Gulf and one set for the
25:43
Pacific U so we can take a look at again what was done last night uh by nelsey
25:48
Ramos and in this case that very large fetch of uh strong to near Gale
25:55
conditions producing Seas up to 17 ft between the Bahamas and Bermuda nasty
26:01
conditions whereas the gulf uh showing only a peak of six or seven feet U so
26:06
this is pretty typical for this time of year to have some extremely high seas uh that some vessels would need to
26:13
avoid we also provide um both as radioa and as well as a colorized version on
26:19
our website the wave periodicity and Direction uh where the uh colder colors
26:24
are the short period wind waves that uh reoccur every you say 6 to 10 seconds uh
26:30
versus the warmer colors that are the very long period 15 to 20 second period
26:36
uh that are crossing the Atlantic often going all the way across the equator uh and so so if knowing the wave dominant
26:44
wave direction in the period is important uh For Your Vessel which of course with parametric rolling being an
26:50
issue for the giant cargo ships um this uh this this information is is important
26:58
this time of year we also do a wind wave graphic uh and so it's a 48 hour
27:04
snapshot of any warnings that are in place and so we provide this um just
27:10
during the winter time and spring and then when during the hurricane season we switch over to the tropical Cyclone
27:15
danger graphic so it's nice but it's just a snapshot as what is expected right at 48 hours and so I'm going to
27:22
show you an example of where we're moving um beyond that uh in the near future
27:29
so one way that one can take a quick look at our grids is with the Marine composite page and so this allows
27:36
interrogation of our grids directly uh via low bandwidth uh jpegs and so on the
27:42
right side is an example of a strong cold front that emerged off the Florida coast a couple years ago and the colors
27:49
represent significant wave heights where blue or less than 10 ft and the uh orange get up to about 25 ft there uh so
27:56
some pretty nasty conditions uh the left side is a graphical representation of that high seas forecast that that I know
28:03
not many people are reading anymore where blue represents at least 8 foot uh Seas orange represents at least 23 knots
28:11
or a strong Breeze and the red indicates any Gale conditions so if I was uh going
28:17
to be going a course from say Bermuda down to San Juan I think I would hold up
28:23
and wait for a couple days just until that uh that very high weight
28:28
and the strong winds would be going going past we have the same for the East
28:33
Pacific so if you're going along the Mexican Riviera or Central America again you can access our grids directly off
28:40
this Marine composite page and we can see in this case a very strong tanek
28:46
event uh that did reach uh about 55 knots or storm force and that plume of
28:52
of high seas impacting the whole uh shipping Lane just south of Central
28:57
America America uh and so so again this is a hazard to be expected in the
29:02
wintertime uh completely clear skies it's a Downs slope wind event but massive seas and and again Gale to storm
29:10
force winds so that's what I wanted to show some of those products um before I get
29:16
into this I did want to ask uh are any Mariners using uh navtech navtex is a
29:23
Tex forecast that focuses on conditions within a couple hundred miles of the
29:28
coast and it's uh uh work and it's really focused on the major ports anyone
29:34
using nav teex and avte x uh which text forecast for Nearshore
29:41
conditions uh anyone saying yes Brian um still waiting on some responses
29:47
here but while we're waiting um we can double back quick to the original radio fax question um we did see uh one person
29:53
saying yet they still do um Steven Leeds chimed in saying I use weather and then Brian waym chimed in saying yes I keep
30:00
it as a backup option as he's a deepsea commercial Mariner yeah that's good we we're not getting rid of radioa anytime
30:07
soon you know as long as there's still people that are using it um then uh then we will hold on to it um there's another
30:15
uh product it's called VRA it's a voice broadcast similar to no weather radio
30:20
but it's uh can be received hundreds of miles offshore um please uh put in the
30:25
chat if anybody uh uses uh CRA as well I I suspect that that uh number of
30:32
customers for for that is has has dwindled quite a bit even more than radio
30:37
effects all right so that's a quick overview of some of our products uh that
30:43
you can access oh gosh I almost forgot I did want to show you what it's going on today again this is a link right on our
30:50
website um to get to our website it's just hurricanes.gov marine hurricanes.gov marine to get to
30:58
our website so this is this interface where you can look at our gritted information so you can choose you want
31:04
winds that are 10 meters above the ocean 30 meters or 50 U because of course some
31:09
giant vessels are very high-profile and they might want winds higher above the
31:14
ocean so we'll stick with the standard 10 meter wind barbs and let's put on
31:19
significant wave heights uh we'll use uh feet and then uh see if this is working
31:25
it was broken before but gosh all our technical folks are awesome so this is working now and it shows um conditions
31:33
colors represent significant wave heights and the wind barbs are shown there and so you can go out through five
31:39
days uh you can see the really nasty conditions that are going to be occurring between Bermuda and the
31:45
Bahamas over the next couple of days uh and so but the Caribbean and the uh the
31:51
Gulf of Mexico fairly quiet all right so that's an example of using that again we have the same for
31:58
the uh East Pacific as well so I did want to switch base then to a little bit
32:03
on our services and we have one core governmental partner that we interact
32:09
with a lot and it's the US Coast Guard so uh the US Coast Guard I'm sure
32:15
everybody's familiar with the the wonderful work those men and women do um I I'd like you to guess how many
32:21
meteorologists does the US Coast Guard employ in their entire force so just um
32:27
if you want throw some numbers out there how many meteorologists how many weathermen weather women are there in
32:34
the US Coast Guard um any guesses Brian is anyone putting a number in
32:40
there uh still waiting yet but okay I'm interested to see what people come up
32:46
with all right okay well we got all right well we've got two answers in there and we've got quite a range um
32:52
Chris is the number between zero and 82 the number is zero
32:58
so they have no meteorologists in the Coast Guard and so by Design the National Weather Service we
33:05
provide forecast and briefing support for the Coast Guard and every 10 years
33:11
the director of The Weather Service and a rear Admiral and the Coast Guard resign this MOA uh so that we can help
33:18
them do their life-saving mission and the way it's broken up throughout the weather service is that we at the
33:25
national centers work with the district and so for example we work very closely with District Seven here in Miami and
33:32
District 8 in New Orleans but we even work with District 5 in Norfolk District 11 in California uh on occasion as
33:41
well uh this time of year uh how we would interact with them would be to
33:46
provide a spot weather forecast so this is a specialized prediction based on
33:51
their needs um and and so it could be for a ship that is uh uh in distress it
33:59
could be for an aircraft that is ditched over the ocean uh it could be for an oil spill um you remember deep water Horizon
34:06
from a couple decades ago uh it could be for law enforcement activities where they're chasing the bad guys um it could
34:13
be for uh where the Coast Guard has identified a a rickety vessel that migrants are trying desperately to reach
34:19
the United States um whatever they're asking for we provide uh including Man
34:25
Overboard and did you know when it's Man Overboard it's actually 85% of the time it's a
34:32
dude overboard not a woman and either guys do stupid things on cruise boats
34:38
and get in trouble or I suspect the main reason is still uh folks working ships
34:44
and oil platforms are primarily men right now but that's an interesting factoid 85% of Man Overboard are
34:51
actually dudes so we gave 157 of these spot forecasts last year in 2023 I said
34:57
expect the num is going to be about the same this year uh and it's to help them in in support of uh issues that they're
35:04
dealing with way away from the coastline so we also want to promote uh
35:11
the weather ready Nation ambassador program uh weather ready nation is where we work with uh other government
35:18
entities and other private organizations uh to get the word out
35:24
about the forecast that we provide for everybody for a charge you know your tax
35:29
dollars are paying for our work and we want to make sure people have access to it and are making the right decisions so
35:35
we have a weather weather ready Nation Marine Ambassador uh and so if your company is not part of the weather ready
35:42
Nation program um you know let me know if you like uh or you could reach out to the website that's listed
35:49
there another way that we're trying to interact and have been interacting with the Marine Community is is hosting an
35:55
annual workshop and so we bring in reps from Cruise Lines cargo ships oil
36:01
companies uh Fisheries uh the Coast Guard uh the the US Navy um recreational
36:07
ve vessel associations uh Maritime acms and so to make sure that we're listening
36:13
to you all on what you do you need next um because we want to be responsive as
36:18
as Government stewards and uh provide information that you're finding useful and uh one way that we've done that uh
36:26
fairly recently is is we're providing videos now and so twice a week Sunday
36:31
afternoon and Thursday afternoon we put on our YouTube channel uh a three to
36:38
five minute video about the forecast for the Caribbean the gulf the Atlantic for the next five days it's called The
36:44
Tropical Atlantic marine weather briefing uh you can sign up for it bya gov delivery uh or you could go to our
36:51
YouTube channel to get it and again it's a summary of what what conditions are going to be like with an emphasis on the
36:57
on the big stuff which would be hurricanes during the um June to November time frame and then these very
37:03
strong winter storms this time of year it's not a new forecast it's just another way to convey the information in
37:09
a succinct fashion another aspect is we're trying to get our forecasters aboard both Noah
37:16
vessels and Coast Guard vessels uh with the idea being that uh only one of our
37:21
16 forecasters has really spent a lot of time at Sea uh and so getting our
37:27
forecasters aboard um these vessels allows us to better understand when we
37:33
say 12T Seas what does that really mean and and Eric Christensen experienced
37:38
that in the North Sea with the uh the Coast Guard Eagle crew uh and so that gives us a better appreciation of what
37:45
Mariners are are understanding it but it also allows us to work with our our Noah core and the Coast Guard colleagues a
37:52
little more closely so to wrap up I did want to get back to this I this radioa thing and
37:59
again it's it's been a tremendous wonderful invention and service to the Marine Community for decades but it's
38:06
changing and the reason I'm sure a lot of you know it's uh starlink is uh
38:12
providing highe reliable internet anywhere on the face of the Earth at a
38:18
fairly reasonable price it's amazing great and so when uh when I ask Mariners
38:25
so what information what platform are I using to get it and a lot of them are
38:31
telling me predict wind or or wy.com and so uh so I get it you know they the
38:37
wy.com for example has beautiful Graphics of winds and waves and so one
38:43
concern of mine though is that this is just raw model output it's not the official forecast uh from the from the
38:51
US government and I I would argue that we have more skillful information than
38:56
what you can get from from a single model um and so what we're looking for
39:01
long term is to be involved uh through the international Maritime organization
39:08
with What's called the S100 rollout and this is where the electronic charting and and display system or etis is going
39:17
to start having um very consistent information from Noah whether it's bomet
39:23
information or current information or what we provide is the weather information uh so starting in 2026 it's
39:31
going to be voluntary for ships to access this but by 20129 any new systems
39:37
installed on ships any new ships are going to be required to have this uh this new ecus system and what we'll be
39:44
providing are the grided information that I just showed you winds and waves um but with one extra enhancement is
39:52
we're going to start providing warning polygons so for example here it could be
39:57
uh where you've got Gale conditions and then inside that uh storm conditions and
40:02
then inside that hurricane conditions basically no go zones to alert you as
40:08
the Mariner for the next couple of days where is the really real dangerous spot and again it would be based upon our
40:14
official forecast and so these cumulative warning polygons uh we're
40:19
going to start producing them experimentally in the next few months um and I'm really excited about that
40:25
opportunity to provide enhanced safety and services for the Marine
40:30
community so on behalf of the 16 men and women that work here in the largest part
40:36
of the National Hurricane Center or the tropical analysis and forecast Branch uh
40:41
again to get to our website it's just hurricanes.gov Marine um you can access our Twitter at
40:48
NHC tapb and we actually have a phone number that Mariners can reach directly
40:54
uh we don't do ship routing but if a mariner has a question we're we're happy to address it uh so there's our number
41:01
305 229 4424 so I hope this was a useful
41:06
overview about what we provide uh at the tropical analysis and forecast branch of
41:12
the National Hurricane Center hoping that you stay safe as you Transit the
41:17
open oceans this winter and spring thank you very
41:22
much does anyone have any oh sorry Brian yeah does anybody have any question question no um we do have one question
41:30
from earlier on it was pertaining to the uh the switch over from uh feet to meters and expressing wave heights
41:36
Foster shooker was asking um when we do switch over from feet to meters how many decimal points will we show because he
41:42
works with pleasure craft so whole meters would present somewhat of a problem okay yeah so that's a good point
41:49
we've we've been actually debating that uh amongst the different uh forecasters
41:55
um and so what we uh gosh I just realized my camera was off I'm so sorry I've got my special tropical shirt for
42:02
Christmas on here uh and so we uh we've decided to do half meter increments so
42:08
that's about a foot and a half and so yes we we understand that a whole meter increment you know one meter two meter
42:14
three meters that's not enough information so so we will be providing that in in half meter increments I think
42:21
at this point um but that's still uh still we're working to Kinks out on that that switch over is is atively scheduled
42:28
to occur on the 15th of May any other questions um let's see um
42:36
not so much questions a couple other a couple additional comments um Rob Murray passed along that YouTube videos for the
42:42
Pacific coast and I assume the Pacific Basin would be very welcome I know that's something we've talked
42:47
about right so when we do the Tropical Atlantic marine weather briefing twice a
42:52
week it that's the focus is the Caribbean the gulf and the West Atlantic uh we've discussed whether to provide
42:59
the same for the Pacific and it's great to hear that there would be interest by Mariners on the Pacific side um so we've
43:06
we've got to uh gota we're going to weigh in on that and make a decision um but it's uh but thank you rob for the
43:13
suggestion that's something we've already been considering and it just depends if we can fit it into our schedule of of existing products and
43:21
services and then another comment we had again from Foster said I tell people that the weather people turn data into
43:27
information the models are good but the Nuance of a human makes a difference yeah I wholly wholly agree
43:33
there yeah and so we we've got some incredibly insightful forecasters here
43:38
that that have had years of experience of looking at the computer models examining the observations putting
43:44
together a coherent forecast and so um you know I I'm very proud of the work
43:50
that we do 24 hours a day 365 days a year and uh I I would suspect we're
43:56
going to help continue to to lead the nation and as as Noah's strategic goal
44:02
is you know you know help with the blue economy both safety and and and
44:10
efficiency okay well I mean we still have a little bit of time here um I had a good question um so for those who are
44:18
in the webinar that you know may not be necessarily privy to some future developments in Noah um kind of leaning
44:25
into like the decision support services that we were discussing on this call there's also a big push for um Noah the
44:30
National Weather Service to be using uh more probabilistic information kind of encompassing multiple scenarios more
44:37
highlights of uncertainty so I wanted to ask Chris what where do you see um not just tap b but the National Hurricane
44:43
Center as well how do you see us using uh probabilistic information going forward right so whenever you make an
44:50
exact forecast or what we call deterministic it's always wrong okay
44:56
sometimes times it's wrong by a little bit sometimes it's worse and so it's better to provide a probabilistic set of
45:04
information that encompasses the uncertainty so then you can have like a most likely scenario but you could also
45:11
have a reasonable worst case and so getting that information I think it's going to be very useful whether it's
45:16
winds or waves and so we are moving toward that because we want to provide
45:21
more nuanced information uh again when you when you make a deterministic forecast it's
45:27
always wrong so we're we uh even a small ER you need to understand what the
45:32
uncertainties are that's so definitely true I am also
45:40
working as an as an incident meteorologist trainy deploy to incidents and I've used a little bit of probabilistic stuff the the partners the
45:46
decision makers they absolutely love it so can definitely attest to that being a thing going forward
45:53
yep um are there any other questions I don't see too too much else in the chat
45:59
but I can we can give it another little bit here because we still got what 10ish minutes or so all right well I actually
46:05
need to finish up my forecast products so I think we'll just uh if anybody does
46:10
have any follow-up questions feel free to send me an email uh it's chris. landc
46:15
you can see my name there l n DSA noah.gov I'd be happy to uh to take any
46:21
comments or questions you might have chris. Lancy noah.gov
46:28
awesome all right why don't we uh say goodbye and thanks for joining us today
46:34
all right that sounds like a plan again thanks everybody for tuning in I hope you found this webinar really helpful
46:39
and really informative um hope you all have a good rest of your day and an even better rest of the holiday season hope
46:45
you all stay safe and have a wonderful time all right thank you
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