Adelaide Metropolitan Waters, Goolwa and adjoining Lakes Marine weather forecast service upgrade

As of 15 July 2005, marine weather forecasts in graphical and tabular form for the Adelaide Metropolitan Waters, Goolwa and adjoining Lakes are issued around 6 am and 6 pm every day of the week. This is a significant upgrade to the previous service that provided information only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The new service, provided to the general public via the Bureau's website, provides current weather observations and forecasts of expected wind and sea conditions in 6-hourly time steps at Outer Harbour, Port Noarlunga, Hindmarsh Island, Edithburgh and Cape Willoughby.

This highly detailed information will supply forecast wind, sea and swell conditions more than two and one half days ahead and will assist boat users in making crucial safety related decisions.

About the forecast

The new graphical, map-based forecast consists of three pages:

• current observations and forecasts for today
• forecasts for tomorrow
• forecasts for two day's time

Arrows within each panel indicate the following:

• The direction of the wind and average wind speed in knots. Note the start of the arrow is the direction that the wind is blowing from. The arrow point shows the direction the wind is blowing to. For example an arrow pointing downwards is blowing from the North - to the South.
• Height of the locally generated sea waves to the nearest half metre. <0.5m means less than half a metre. Generally sea waves travel in the same direction as the local prevailing wind.
• Direction of swell waves are abbreviated to eight compass points (see Table 1.) and the height of swell waves to the nearest half metre. <0.5m means less than half a metre. Note that the direction given indicates where the swell waves are coming from.

Table 1. Compass points

The latest observed wind speeds and directions are given in the top left panel of page 1 of the forecast and are identified by a dot at the centre of each arrow. These dots indicate the location of the weather report with their respective place names close by.

Beneath each panel is the time and date in Central Standard Time (CST) or Central Daylight Time (CDT) during daylight savings.

Link to graphical forecast

Example of graphical (map-based) forecast

A tabular version of the forecast conditions is provided on a separate link if preferred with forecast times running left to right and each location running down the page. Each location has a forecast of wind sea and swell. An example of the table is shown below (see table 2.). Note that both wind directions and swell directions are given to the nearest eight compass points. N/A denotes no significant swell waves.

Table 2. Example of tabular forecast

Morning Issue - 21 July 2005

Issued at 5:44am 21 July 2005

Table shows over-water wind speed in knots at indicated point locations, wind wave within 5nm of point(excluding Hindmarsh Island*) and open water swell wave in metres.

* The forecast for Hindmarsh Island is for winds at that location. However, in an effort to provide more valuable information the sea height referred to is for the central point of Lake Alexandrina (the large water body northeast of Hindmarsh Island). Sea heights will be lower in more protected locales.

<0.5m means seas below 0.5 metres.
N/A denotes no significant swell waves.

Link to tabular forecast

If you would like more information, or wish to provide feedback, please contact Paul Lainio on 08 8366 2640 or alternatively email us via our feedback page.