Yeah, its just plain common sense to have DLS, but people from Vic are having delusions if they think the wind here is any good at the moment. Its been a heartbreaker so far this season! Not only does the BOM seem to get the forecast repeatedly wrong, the seabreeze just hasn't been building like it normally does!

Last summer we were getting 4-5 days a week, this summer it gets windy for an hour then drops out, which is long enough to get down to the beach and set your gear up just in time to watch it glass off!

This is the forecast for today:

Forecast for Thursday until midnight
Winds: Southwesterly 25 to 30 knots tending south to southwesterly 15 to 25
knots during the morning, then increasing to 20 to 30 knots later in the
evening. Seas: 1 to 2 metres. The chance of thunderstorms from midday.

Yet, the wind gauge at St Kilda is only showing 2 knots at the moment WTF.

Well, if its any consolation it looks like the wind has settled in for the day and is going to build some. 17 knots SSW at the beacon and St Kilda. 21 knots down at the South Channel.

That means it will probably glass off at about 545pm

We might not have DLS but at least we have wind. Another tough week.

Oh well here goes, if you love DLS, Melbourne, Sydney, and all the other fantastic cities in the world that have it, why don't you leave and go and live there, that way us poor simple backwards people in Perth will have less winging kiters and more room to go kiting ourselves.

Love kiting and seabreezes, hate wingers

Since we dont have DLS anymore, I just can go kiting during week once. cant rock of 3pm every day .


it daylight 4.45 and then you get up ..... then you have to wait until the shops are open. so annoying

Whatever

I would not bash the BOM forecast.. if there is a forecast that is totally useless crap, then it is certainly the one on this website!
For Melbourne, I always check BOM, Seabreeze and Windfinder.
Result:

BOM is imo the best overall. Since they give squall warnings etc., it is a must to check anyway. Yeah especially last week the wind was different in Altona than predicted, but wind strenghts were varying widely in the bay.

Windfinder has a strange scale.. 15knts mean 25 in reality, 20knts 35. But if you know that, the forecast is not too bad. For Rosebud, I often found the windfinder forecast for South Channel Island better.

And then there is Seabreeze.. Not rarely do they predict the entire opposite than what is happening, e.g. "dropping from 20knts to 5 during the afternoon". The last few weeks I had that experience a couple of times when the wind was actually building to 20knts through the afternoon and holding, like the other forecasts said.
There does not seem to be an error pattern in the Seabreeze forecasts, sometimes they predict way too much, then way too little, get the tendency wrong etc - from my experience, it is just plain useless.
Just wondering about the reason, do they use less data, a different/new model, and are the Seabreeze forecasts better elsewhere?
If a newbie comes to Melbourne and relies just on Seabreeze, he would be srewed.

even tho i voted 4 dls, i'm happy it didn't get in. when i'm driving to work at 5am i see about 2 or 3 dickheads on the road. if dls got in i'd have to put up with about 2 or 3 hundred of them. i gues i'mm just lucky enough to work by my own watch, but i do sympathise with u guys stuck at work while i'm at the beach settin up. hopefully our beautiful state of wa will get with the times..........eventually.

tgladman said...

even tho i voted 4 dls, i'm happy it didn't get in. when i'm driving to work at 5am i see about 2 or 3 dickheads on the road. if dls got in i'd have to put up with about 2 or 3 hundred of them. i gues i'mm just lucky enough to work by my own watch, but i do sympathise with u guys stuck at work while i'm at the beach settin up. hopefully our beautiful state of wa will get with the times..........eventually.

Think that may be the other way round dark at 5am with DLS so less traffic.