Weather Forecasts

General

As we've mentioned elsewhere, Atlanta area windsurfers tend to become students of the weather. Since we don't have any particular geography (e.g. ocean, desert) to drive wind on a regular or daily basis, we depend upon weather systems. Systems vary in occurrence and magnitude- a fancy way of saying: when it blows and how hard it blows isn't something you can anticipate or expect very far into the future.

If you go some place like Cape Hatteras for a week in season, you can generally anticipate getting anywhere from four to six days of wind. For windsurfers, Florida in the spring and San Francisco in the summer deliver wind almost on a daily basis.

We don't have that luxury. To plan our outings, we look to weather forecasts. To confirm the forecasts (forecasts can be wrong), we depend on certain indicators to tell us the likely or actual conditions on the water.

Forecasts

Forecasts, of course, helpful. Forecasts for within three days are fairly reliable. Forecasts further out than that should be considered, in our experience, suggestive. They tell you that things may develop but we've seen plenty of great forecasts five days out wither to hardly any wind at all.

Public Forecasts

Unlike days of old when we had to ferret out National Weather Service (NWS) computer model output from deep in their servers, now, the information easily found from a menu on the standard 7-day forecast.

An example for Gainesville, Lake Lanier: Hourly Forecast

Note that summer forecasts, both model and regular text, may overstate the wind if thunderstorms are in the forecast. The gusts you see predicted are most likely to happen in a storm rather than the rest of the day.

Private Forecasts

These two are popular

• Windfinder.com
• Intellicast

Observations

A prediction of wind doesn't always mean that there's wind. It's best to confirm things before you go.

Personal observations:

• Check our forums. Club members will often post conditions they find at local lakes on windy days.

Some of the best observations come from airports close by local lakes:

• Lake Lanier: Gilmer Memorial Airport. Gainesville (KGVL). It is elevated so the wind readings are fairly dependable and consistent with on the water readings. The principal exception is warm days in the spring when we have a Dome Effect.
• Allatoona Lake: McCollum Field, Marietta (KRYY). It also is elevated. Allatoona is smaller and has signficant wind shadows in certain wind directions. That should be considered in translating McCollum readings to the lake.

There are private wind meters, as well.

• Windfinder.com reports those readings for Lake Lanier.
• The Lake Lanier Sailing Club on Lanier gives fairly accurate readings on west winds but because of its location, can underestimate easterlies. As well, the bay in front of Van Pugh Park can have slightly stronger wind than the LLSC reports.

Generic Atlanta weather readings can be misleading. Often, Atlanta readings are given from the NWS office at Falcon Field in Peachtree City which is about 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta and 85 miles from Gainesville. Other readings come from the Atlanta Airport (63 miles to Lake Lanier) where is always seems to blow in the summer even when there is no wind anywhere else in the area.

Tropical Weather

Tropical weather (storms, hurricanes) sometimes bring wind after the come ashore close by. Many times, the wind field can be relatively small so forecasting whether you actually will have wind is difficult.

Wunderground.com has an excellent collection of tropical weather forecasts, reports, discussions, etc.