Don't trust the weather channel!

[Freeeedom]

I hadn't been out for a while - I always have a break between Christmas and New Year because the waterways are usually crowded with jet skis tearing all over the place and all the main estuarine channels crowded with crab pots and anchored tinnies - so, now that the main holiday period is over, I thought I would have a check to see if there were any prawns in the Pine River yet. I checked the tides on the interactive weather channel link last night (Monday) which said there was a large high tide about 6am. Beauty! I thought, I'll be able to get well up Cabbage Tree Creek and Nundah Creek to check them out too. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the ramp just before 6 to find the tide was dead low. I checked out the Pine - there were a few prawns up above Castle Hill; managed just under a kilo. By about 10am I could get into Nundah Creek - just a few greasies in the upper reaches. When I got home and had put the boat away I logged onto the weather channel website, about 2pm, and sent them a feedback saying their tidal data was incorrect. I got an immediate 'out of office' reply saying they would not be back to answer feedback until January 23rd. Since incorrect tidal data could present a danger to boaties, particularly anyone travelling at night, I rang the weather channel to let them know that their data was wrong. They said they would get onto it at once. At the time of posting this topic (8.00pm) the weather channel is still showing the tide times incorrectly, with the high and low times reversed! The message is clear - check the tides through the BOM site, which I would normally do.
Cheers Freeeedom

[Louis]

G'day Freeeedom,


Quite unbelievable isn't it.




Louis

[deb]

That explains it!
I had checked Bom but, when the mob arrived to go out, they were adamant it was the opposite, turned out 'Skip' was right, but I must admit, due to being rather outnumbered, I wondered if I had it wrong until reaching the ramp!

[Spaniard_King]

I don't think theres been a good/corect forecast come from any weather reporting agency in the last month.

I use the suck it and see method...get up and check the live weather stations 8-)
otherwise ya would neva go fishin

Garry

[RAGINGBULL]

Gents

I have a theory
Every year during the holidays the weather prediction is not the best .
I think that all the experienced forecasters go on holiday and leave a bunch of novices to run the show ????
Because this is not an exact science, they can get away with it to some degree.

Am i making any sense!!!!

Just my thoughts
Mark

[Louis]

G'day Mark,


I recon you might be on the right track. It certainly does sound logical to me.



Louis

[Heath]

Nah its the BOM.

Weather channel get their data from the BOM. Go check the BOM site for tides & see what year it says ;)

http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/tides/MAPS/qld.shtml

[Freeeedom]

No, it's not the BOM. I checked the BOM site yesterday and it was correct. I thought that the weather channel had simply reversed the times for high and low, but a more detailed check this morning (Wednesday) showed that even the times are different - the weather channel is still wrong by the way!
This afternoon's tides according to the BOM are
High 2.5m at 1248pm
Low 0.4m at 1940pm

On the weather channel they are
Low 0.3m at 1329pm
High 1.7m at 1919pm

I don't know about you but I'm pretty annoyed that they haven't done anything to correct the data even though it's now over 18 hours since I rang them
Cheers Freeeedom

[gogecko]

If the weather channel gets their data from the bom, then its probably a programming bug, and your the first to pick it up. Well done for alerting them.

The bom site is good at historical data, so you can go back and see which data they are using.

I reckon weather channel has not been programmed to accept 06 as a year, they probably only wrote a 12 month program and didnt think that they would need to a just it for 06, sort of like a Y2k bug. So when the calender clicked over in january, the program asked it for tides for Jan 2 05 , and not 06. Or maybe it repeats the tides for 2 Dec 05, if it found an error, etc. Get my drift?

By comparing possible date ranges and looking for high tides (Brisbane bar?) on the bom site, you could work out what they did wrong.

I often use the bom this way. When I see a good fish caught in my local river, and a time of day given, then I go and see what tide it was caught on. Its usually around high tide.

cheers
Andrew

[Freeeedom]

Gogecko, I think you're right. I had a look back a couple of years for the tides on January 3 on the BOM site but could not find a match. This afternoon I got an email from the weather channel saying they had a problem with their data feed and that the data supplier was looking into it. The tide times on the weather channel have now been corrected.
Cheers Freeeedom

[gogecko]

The bom has a minor bug itself. Its showing 2007 and not 2006 in its webpage. when you query it, it does give the correct tide for 2006 tho. However little things like this are enought to throw auto feeds into chaos.

Sounds like the programers are on holidays at both ends.

I use www.browniescoastwatch.com to get a link to bom.

cheers
Andrew