Best forecast model by location and application (wind, rain, waves..) for sailing in the Adriaitc Sea
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Best forecast model by location and application (wind, rain, waves..) for sailing in the Adriaitc Sea
I am particularly interested in the best forecast models to sail in the Slovenia, Croatia, Greece and Italy regions of the Adriatic sea. Can we say the Icon D2 2.2km is the best for Croatia and Slovenia? How about the Corfu Lefkas region? Or should one sitck with ECMWF 9 km?. The wind forecasts look quite different depending on the chosen model.
Is there a table with the best forecast model per (micro-) region? Comments and advice on Bora wind forecast are also welcome
Thanks for your experienced and knowledgeable input -
That’s a lot of questions.
From a general point of view, this post is also valid for the Adriatic Sea, with in addition ICON-D2 where this model is available. Where there are mountains on islands or on coasts, it is more relevant to use high resolution models. But medium resolution models are useful for long term prediction.
As far as I know, there is no table showing model accuracy per region.
Bora wind is due to the pressure difference between regions beyond Julian Alps and cantabric Alps (when showing high pressure) and Adriatic, Italy, Mediterranean Sea (when showing low pressure). Same for Mistral wind in France explained in this article. So you must monitor the pressure difference using the Pressure layer and pressure isolines. -
We spent 10 days sailing in the region between Pula and Zadar. Comparing the real situation with Windy wind forecasts (direction and wind speed as measured by boat instruments). In my opinion the best modeling was given by ICON-D2 2.2km and ICON-EU 7 km, I would not use ECMWF 9km in the region. It is probably difficult to model the zones between the small islands. The northern part of Croatia is at the limit of ICON-D2 2.2km coverage. ICON-EU 7 km matched better in many occasions. So I will use ICON-EU 7 km in the future and compare with ICON-D2 2.2km sometimes.