Tide Forecast on Windy
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I have now logged more than 66000M on my 7m40 long boat covering the British Iles, Ireland and The Netherlands round past Spain and on to Italy. Passage making or going up river till the boat grounds (at 1m) I know what I want from tide information. A weeks coefficients and H and L heights and times for the expected area are copied out on a formica board and kept at the chart table for reference at all times even when the boat is ashore for maintenance.
You have made a good start -But- All the times should be dated unambiguously (d/m or m/d).Try a line for date as punctuation between the data blocks.
- Even the British Admiralty now use metres for depth. Remove the ft. It is just clutter and as such can only be a source of error or confusion.
- Remove the reference to the previous or next tide which is just more clutter ( and wrong see 6)). The time NOW appears at the top of the screen on my iPad. I can do the rest.
- Cut the clutter of words. HW and LW are well understood and not even needed if the data is decluttered.
- Add Tidal Coefficients. The British shun them because they are foreign but they are one of the most usefull tools available when working depths and calculating tidal stream rates.
- In the data box under Type: add the data source.
On the 12th March
Your values
LW 0739 2.48m HW 1401 4.22m LW 2024 2.39m
UK Hydrographic Office
0114 4.2 0731 2.3 1411 4.1 2007 2.3
SHOM
HW 0121 4.19 LW 0746 2.32 HW 1407 4.15 LW 2025 2.24
National Tidal and Sea Level Facility
0105 4.29m 0750 2.42m 1357 4.23m 2029 2.43m
tide-forecast
0138AM 4.17m 0812AM 2.47m 0219PM 4.12m 0843PM 2.43m (Yes I know)
Tides for fishing
0111 4.3m 0737 2.5m 1400 4.3m 2022 2.4m
Mobile Geographics version 1
0155PM 4.00m 0836PM 2.41m
Mobile Geographics version 2
0220PM 4.12m 0843PM 2.43m
On the UK E Coast be ready a comfortable half hour before any time and watch. Rubish in a tidal stream can reverse direction without loosing speed at tide turn. Heights depend heavily on North Sea conditions and sometimes match the tabulated values sometimes. Just listen to the Thames Navigation radio for the river pilots.
Keep it simple.Just provide the numbers with their source and leave the skipper to do what skippers do.
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@timber2
Good advice Mate ! Most are for Windy but some are only for skippers.
OK to remove the ft, but may be this unit is used in USA?
HW and LW is fine.
Strange to me that you like tidal coefficients. Are they available in UK? I’ve never see them used in this country.
At # 6, I don’t understand the examples you give, is it just to show that everyone does not display tides in the same way? -
Love having tides included on windy well done. But the format is a little clunky. I'd stick to m and ditch the feet. Also the date format used is confusing with potential depth. A standard date format would be great, so that it's not confused with other data. Well done though. Windy is amazing and so useful for my sailing and skiing !
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Please look at the forecast for the Columbia River near Vancouver, WA. There are two tide "forecast" stations near each other wild wildly different data. One is noted as "dubious accuracy". If someone would not notice that "dubious accuracy" note in the title, this could get them in trouble.
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I'd love to see the sinusoidal sea level curve. This gives a quick impression on the times and amplitude of the tide. Also, in keeping with Windy's visual style :)
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Was directed here from another post.
I am trying to find a quicker way to get my local/closest tide data without having to zoom way in on my android device. There are a lot of tide stations near me and I have pinch zoom a bunch just to get to the correct data. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I wish there was a button somewhere when you have the tide layer on that would just pop up the data for the station closest to your location. I'm hoping this is just user error.
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Not sure if it's at all possible, but a tidal graph like this one is very easily read and even much more informative when interactive where you can slide to a specific time or date to see the forecast; Just a thought.
X
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Well done. The next, even more useful step would be to add a tidal stream animation layer. Any chance? I sail on the west coast of Scotland, where the plan is normally ‘to go with the flow’, and having an animated, time variable layer would be a great aid to planning.
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Love your work. Fast and accurate for Brisbane Australia.
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Great !!!!
A very good idea !!!
Somebody for search harmonic tide algorytm in Spain NW coast ? -
Hi, I love the tides idea. I do kitesurfing at Tasmania where tides are 2.5m high and they change rapidly so it's a critical information for me before I go on the water. However, the text representation of tides isn't very clear and easy to read. I would love if you could do something more like this:
https://tides.willyweather.com.au/tas/north-western/port-sorell.html
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Well done, that was a missing feature. I'm a solo ocean sailor, kitesurfer and snowkiter, dreaming about combining sailing and snowkiting in Norway at some point.
Well, regarding the tides, I agree with @timber2 on most points. Here's my list:- meters instead of ft
- coefficients would be nice
- especially in the English Channel (east of Dover), the tides can produce some very weird pattern with double high tides in a cycle due to strange interference. See also this paper. These cases make a visualization very important, instead of just raw High and Low values.
- some ressources that come into mind regarding tide levels:
-- dmi.dk - click on "Vandstand" - this shows a nice "sloshing" of the tide wave in the North Sea
-- myocean & earthcube.org for general ocean & earth data
-- German tide forecasts in Northern and Baltic Sea bsh.de - nice to see the difference between astronomical tide and ocean model prediction, including an error estimate. - last, for all the whitewater enthusiasts, I know the "tide" on the rivers are of utmost importance! This is probably a bigger project, to keep you guys busy, but would be great to see as well. I guess also to see correlation of accumulated rain and flooding.
Well, keep up the good work!
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@pixl
I agree with your remarks and specially with the advantage of a graphic presentation of the tide variation during 1 or 2 days.
Then you think that tidal coefficients should be nice. Sure, but I am surprised that you use them in Norway. Could you give information about these coefficients.
(Same question asked to @timber2 but not received any answer). -
I agree with the good remarks and comments to improve the tidal data in Windy.
For navigation and sailing it is important to know the reference of the
tidal height. Many nautical charts in Europe are referred to L.A.T. (lowest astronomical tide).
On other areas there will be an other reference level.In addition it is important to get the exact time(zone) for HW and LW. If a harbour is
accessible e.g. HW +-2 hours, the exact time is essential. Ignoring the one hour of daylight
saving time can cause problems. I suggest a text containing
local time and difference to UTC like: "BST = UTC+1"A good reference for tidal navigation in Europe is the "Reeds Nautical Almanac"
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Great to see the icons for the tides. Maybe the date could show?
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For the Netherlands it works fine, but..... i was calculating with which hight my ship can pass the bridge. During calculating i experianced that the tides are given in “LAT” (which is not shown) while i was calculating on “NAP”.
Maybe showing both is an option. Or when this is not an option because only the Netherlands is calculating by using “NAP” then at least say or show that it is in “LAT”.
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I live on a tidal river and fly a small amphibious seaplane--so tide height is important to me. Your tables for the James River in Virginia, USA, appear to be quite accurate as far as the times are concerned. Tide height here is heavily influenced by wind, however, so the heights predicted by ALL tide tables are notoriously inaccurate. I think the only to improve them would be to factor local surface wind into the equation. I just do it by feel: if the wind has been 10 knots from the northeast for a day, I figure about 10% more than the tables predict. If it's been two days, 20%. And so on. But those are just very rough guesses. I've never actually measured wind water to be sure of anything. Anyway, I really like your tide predictions!
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Hi, thanks for creating a great weather app and website, so glad I found it.
The tide section is good but took me a few mins to work out how it’s being displayed. Mainly I think the way the date is written could be clearer. Perhaps it’s just a different format that we’re used to here in the U.K.
Keep up the good work.
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@ivo This is a great idea . As a sailor I use windy all the time and this is just one more reason to make it my number 1 usfull App
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good idea and very useful for me. The tide table needs to show dates - very confusing looking at the times and not being able to quickly establish what day its referring to. Tide tides seem to be about 30 mins different to local data
in New Zealand
