Have you ever wondered which website or app you should use for your weather or wave forecast? There are so many - Ventusky, Windy, Met Eireann, AccuWeather, to name a few. All of them producing the forecast for the next few days, sometimes consistent, sometimes slightly different, and sometimes - very different! Who has time to check multiple websites? Different ways of presenting forecasts makes it even harder to compare the presented information.
What you could receive the wave and weather forecast on your phone, in one neat graph, with sources clearly stated? Let me introduce Wave Obs!
In 2020 Wave Group at UCD started WaveObs, as a warning and planning tool for the project engineer. During the years WaveObs grew, and developed into an amazing project - with extensive past forecast database, forecast improvement tools, and a friendly Telegram bot that would provide you with the forecast for the next few days. The history of Wave Obs and the project details can be found in the publication in the Environmental Data Science - here.
But if you are just looking for the daily forecast, you can download Telegram app from Google Store or Apple Store, and subscribe to the Wave Obs channel here. Once you have the app and are subscribed to the channel, on the daily basis you will receive a short message with text description first. It will look something like this:
"Hi lads, I'm WaveObsBot Tomorrow 12 Feb 2024, the maximum wave height will be 4.1 m and the maximum wind speed will be 15.8 m/s. The average air temperature will be around 7.4ºC and the water is expected to be hotter with 9.0ºC. The visibility will be 22.6 km throughout the day. Met-Éireann indicates: Clear spells and scattered showers on Sunday night, the showers mainly confined to Atlantic coastal districts. Some of the showers will be wintry with the chance of hail and sleet. A cold night with frost and ice in parts as lowest temperatures range from 0 to +3 degrees in moderate to fresh southwest winds. Fresh and blustery on Monday with sunshine and widespread showers. Some of the showers will be wintry, mainly over the hills. Maximum temperatures generally ranging from 5 to 8 degrees in fresh to strong southwest to west winds. Cheers!"
The next message will contain two plots, just like this: