Bureau of Meteorology hasa new look Marine Weather Page 

  BoM’s new website www.bom.gov.au/marine contains all the existing marine weather products Australia-wide packaged together, as well as some new products that mariners should find very useful. 
  For instance if you select the ‘New South Wales’ tab there are links to Forecasts, Warnings, Weather and Buoy observations, Tide information and Sunrise and Sunset times, all on one page. 
  One new innovation is the computer generated wind maps. These maps show the wind direction and wind speed for Australian coastlines every three hours out to two days. The prediction maps then extend out to seven days with six hour time gaps. You can ‘zoom in’ on individual States with Western Australia and Queensland divided into southern and northern zones due to their size. 
  There are larger scale maps available for coastal capital cities every three hours out to two days. These are ideal for planning long trips or looking at the weekend winds as early as Monday. Also in some of the larger forecast areas they are helpful in ‘localising’ wind speeds and directions. To access the wind maps select the colorful map and choose your state or local forecasting area from the drop down menus. 
  For coastal capitals there is a local waters forecast every three hours and extends out for two days. 
  It is very important to mariners that these forecast maps should not replace checking the official written forecasts and warnings. The computer models that produce these maps have their own characteristics for various areas. 
  One characteristic is that over fifteen knots the model can sometimes underestimate the wind strength a little. 
  The Bureau uses several different computer models as guidance to their forecasts. Sometimes due to different information that goes into the models and the way that information is used by the models they may compute different scenarios from each other. 
  One indicator of a good forecast from model data is that if a wind field for a day that is several days out remains more or less the same on each day. 
  Conversely, when looking at the future wind field, and as you check the wind field on progressive days and the pattern changes considerably, the forecast may not be reliable. 
  In other Bureau news there are online surveys for users of the Bureau’s Oceanographic Services and Tidal Services. See the top right of the Bureau’s home page.

Next month: Wave characteristics. 

*Malcolm Riley is the Public and Marine Officer for the Bureau of Meteorology in Hobart. He has worked in all States with the exception of QLD and is a Master V. He gives education courses on Marine Meteorology.