Finding the Weather Windows…

With the weather being how its been this year, reading the weather has been very important if you want to get out to fish and taking advantage of each little window is important. One needs to keep an eye on the trends or patterns of the weather as well as south to north and west to east movements. I use the NDBA 41002 reports for the offshore prediction, http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41002 to get an idea of how the patterns are moving and as with the SST charts, I watch them every day. Forecasting starts HUDSON CANYON to CAPE FEAR south, breaking it up into smaller areas along the way.

Once you do this for a while you will start seeing the patterns in the weather, as well as the indicators to the fact that the forecasters are not quite sure what the weather going to do. Or at least the speed or timing of its arrival in your area. Watch for the forecasters to talk about East of or West of 70W, to 75W. That will let you know if it is coming or has already gone by and is offshore of where you are going to be. Read the forecast to your north as well as the one to your south. This will help you see if a front has moved passed your area or is moving into your area.

An easy way to see Lot. & Lan. for your area and the relationship to the "Break" in you area is http://www.flashearth.com/ which is what I like to use. In the upper right hand corner you will see a box that says "Flash Earth" and under that "Google Maps" Microsoft VE, Microsoft labels, "Yahoo Maps" "Ask.com Aerial", "Ask .com Physical", "Open Layers" and "NASA Terra daily". You need to click on "Open Layers" for this and you will/ should see the "Break" details for you area. Moving the map, you will see in the lower right hand corner, your Lat.- Lon.

If you click on "NASA Terra daily" you will see the cloud cover in you area and once you look and study this for a while you will see wind directions and interpret the jet stream. Another thing to remember is "NASA Terra daily" is not in true time when you look at it, as with SST charts, I call it old news as it can be many hours behind from the time you look at it to the time of you arrival in that area. Also if you notice, you will see a cloud line or lines over the gulf stream, this is a good indicator of where the temp break is as the clouds will tend to form very near them, just as how they form near land or islands.

Another great way to keep track of what the winds are doing and going to do is keep track of the "Isobars", this indicates the wind intensity as to wither they are close together (very strong winds) or far apart (mild winds). I use Intellicast weather to do this, http://www.intellicast.com/National/Wind/WINDcast.aspx?location=USNC0760 I have it set up for Wilmington NC, since this is my home port, but once your there, you can easily set it up for your area when you go to that page. You can find most of your weather from my site for the Wrightsville Beach area, set up for you on this page, http://www.gottaflyguideservice.com/page16.html as well as setting up yourself a home weather page from Sportfishermen.com at http://www.sportfishermen.com/weather/ for you area. Also when you click on the weather page on sportfishmen.com be sure to look at the BARO on the map to see the Isobars for the entire country, this will help you track the fronts.

In North Carolina, there are 2 distinct weather break areas, one is Hatteras point. Here is the end of the cold northern Labrador current that flows to the south, From here to the north you find the thick banks of fog due to the cold water hitting the warm water along with the shallow water of the Currituck and Pamlico sounds which can cause high winds on shore. This area is its own weather maker and should be traveled with caution from what the weather man says for the area. The 20 NM
TO 250 NM OFFSHORE, is a little more on the money than the forecast out to 20 NM in my opinion but the offshore side of the northern Labrador can extend out past 20 NM at times.

The other break is Cape Lookout Point. Hatteras to Cape Lookout weather is greatly influenced by the Pamlico Sound, a very large body of shallow water that heats up quickly of cools down quickly and has the ability to create its own weather and is in some ways, why you have 2 different wave sets on that Lookout point, the eastside as some refer to it you find a northern or eastern swell and the west side you find a south to south west swell.

The Cape Fear (originally called "Cape Fair" on the old maps) for some reason does not seem to have the weather break that the other 2 points have. "Bald Head Island" at the mouth of the Cape Fear is the northern most tropical Island in the US. The Cape Fear River does how ever have a big effect on the fronts moving from West to East, stopping them from reaching the coast a lot of the summer or creating larger ones from not much of nothing that hammer the local beaches with lighting and heavy afternoon rains.

The Chesapeake Bay area I'm sure does much of the same type of weather changes as does the Pamlico and Currituck sounds do here and I'm sure that Maryland and the Cape May areas are greatly influenced by the shallow water heating and cooling of the rivers and bays as it also can create its own weather. I'm not going to say much about these areas as it is not my stomping grounds and I have not studied the weather patterns there that much.

I hope that what I have said above will help some of you be able to better pick your "weather windows" for your offshore fishing or at least give you more ways to look at how to interpret what the weather man says…as Bob Dylan said, " don't need to be a weather man to know which way the wind blows…"
We just need to know how to understand what the forecasters are trying to tell us…

Capt. Lee Parsons
Gottafly Guide Service
www.gottaflyguideservice.com