Newport News Windsurfing Weather Page
compiled by Todd Ferrante, last update 8/15/08
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GMT stands for Greenwitch Mean Time. Z stands for Zulu. These
are equivalent ways of specifying global time often used in reporting
weather.
To convert to EDT subtract 4 hours.
Current conditions:
Past and future conditions. Clicking graphs will link to source websites.
Newport News
Langley AFB, Hampton
weather snapshot for Norfolk NAS/Willoughby
weather snapshot for Oceana NAS
Often used links: I have not yet come up with
a
way to get this information directly on this page.
- Local
forcast. (from weather underground) Includes wind forcast for
about
18 hours in advance. Current conditions are from Newport News
airport. Link at bottom of page to useful weather history. Also, the forcast
from weather.com.
- Virginia
weather
roundup. Current conditions around the state. Probably the best
tool
for judging current conditions. Extremely fast loading because there
are
no graphics. Updated within minutes of the top of the hour.
- 24
hour
history,
KPHF. 24
hour
history,
KLFI. Shows current conditions and conditions for every hour for
the
past 24. Very useful for correlating your windsurfing experiances to
wind
speed at the airport.
- Windsurfing Enthusiasts of Tidewater. The website for the local windsurfing club. The events pages tends to be outdated, but the local sailing sites page is
absolutely awesome.
- Letsrig archives. The local sailors have an email list, called Letsrig, that is really the heart of the local scene. Check here to see who is sailing where and when.
- National Hurricane Center.
It turns out that this is a useful link to have when living in Hampton
Roads.
- Cool
graphical display that shows tide levels and times with sun and moon
rise and set times. Tides at: Yorktown;
Messick
Point; CBBT;
HRBT;
JRB.
An important safety tip when sailing at Yorktown is to avoid sailing there if the tide is running in the same direction as the wind is blowing. Also, avoid sailing at Factory Point South at low tide, as it gets dangerously shallow.
- Another good weather site falls to the lure of commercialism. The maps formally found at a Florida State website are no longer externally linkable.
You now have to go to the CoolWX site to see them. Wind. Pressure
The maps: Here is what is happening across
the
country and in our region. These maps are pulled in from all over
the place. Sometimes the servers that host them go down.
Usually
this is temporary. If problems are ongoing, I pull the map and
try
to replace it with something else. Remember, wind blows clockwise
around high pressure systems and counter clockwise around lows.
The
higher the pressure gradient (more tightly spaced isobars) the harder
it
blows. Cool wind from the north and damp warm air from the south
meet and form stormy frontal systems. With these simple
guidelines
and a summers worth of watching, you will probably predict the wind as
well or better than the pros.
Maps from Ohio State University.
Current windspeed:
Current pressure and wind:
An animated history from Weather Underground. This is like the coolest thing ever...
Forcast from Weather.com.
Maps from Intellicast.
Forcast for today 2pm EDT. Use the Intellicast forcasts with caution. I've found them to be off in the past.
Forcast for tomorrow 2pm EDT.
I made pages containing the graphical wind forcasts from NOAA
for both the Hampton Roads area and for the
Outer Banks of NC .
From 8am to 8pm, the times are correct. From 8pm to 8am, the times are 12 hours off. Sorry, but this is a fluke on the NOAA site.
Forcast for today 3pm EST.
Forcast for tomorrow 3pm EST
And the day after tomorrow 3pm EST
Maps from Unisys.
Local dopplar radar
From WAVY:
From WVEC:
From Weather
Underground:
