Are all weather forecasts services equal?
World rally teams like the BP/Ford WRC team use a particular kind of service….
Most of us will use various weather forecasts services on a regular basis, whether we view them on TV, listen to the shipping forecast on the radio or go on line. The weather is indeed all around us.
However various markets have always had a greater need and demand for high quality weather forecasts. Professional sailors, Motor sports such as F1 and WRC, Fishermen, Energy companies (Wind farms, Electricity grids etc) all require the best data the weather forecast industry can provide. As you can imagine this kind of data is very expensive, that was until a London based company called Kona Ltd came onto the market.
They produce the highest resolution and quality forecast data ever produced for all of these markets and areas and they now put this same data at our fingertips all viewable through a simple to use graphical website, www.theyr.net which is explained in more detail below.
What we like about this service is simply the quality of the forecasts and of course the price. For 4.50 per month or £35.00 (68p per week) for the year they offer users forecast data 24/7 (hour by hour over six days updated every 12 hours) that was previously only in the domain of companies with deep pockets. Their philosophy is simple, ‘to offer high quality in high volume at a low price’. They still offer and supply even more ‘focused’ services to their high-end customers such as BP/Ford WRC.
David Young, the managing director of Kona ltd explains the concept like this.
“We believe there is an ever increasing community in need of detailed weather forecast information presented in a easy to understand format at a very affordable price. The ease of use of our web site belies the fact that this data exceeds what many national forecast services could hope to provide.”
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Theyr.net version 2.0 is produced by our specialist numerical weather forecast team in North America. Our chief scientist has been at the forefront of the development and application of numerical weather forecasting for over thirty years. Through our new interface we provide users with the most advanced weather forecasts *models ever used for all of these areas.
New with V 2.0
* We are now using the most advanced weather *models to produce weather forecasts of exceptional detail and quality.
* Our forecasts are now available out to 6 days and are based on 0.1 degree high resolution models, more than twice that of our previous models and providing 100 times more data than the standard 1 degree data normally used.
* Snow and freezing rain forecasts have been added (included in the precipitation field).
* New style meteograms go out to six days and include all precipitations (rain, snow, freezing rain), wind and temperature.
* Our *WRF-NMM meoscale nonhydrostatic model is taking into account all land features (vegetation type, soil type, snow cover and depth, slope and real topography – this is the only model using real topography.
* Running on up to 0.1 deg resolution the WRF-NMM model is able to capture all weather patterns size of 10km and up.
* As it takes into account all these topographic features, WRF-NMM is by far the most efficient model available and for example will show land/sea effects on quite a small scale.
*The WRF-NMM model received the ultimate endorsement in June 2006 when it was adopted by the National Centre for Enviromental Prediction (NCEP), the section of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which produces their weather data. Since switching to WRF-NMM , NCEP have been producing weather data based on a resolution of 0.1 deg, but only for the US. The WRF-NMM model is also undergoing extensive testing and is expected to be adopted by the National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
We believe there is an ever increasing community in need of detailed weather forecast information presented in a easy to understand format at a very affordable price. The ease of use of the web site belies the fact that this data exceeds what many national forecast services could hope to provide.
Our service is used by
* professional and Olympic sailors
* International sailing competition support both for competitors and fans (Transat, Ostar, British Olympic Sailing teams, Gypsy Moth IV etc)
* Electricity grids
* Wind farms
* Nuclear Power plants
* Offshore research facilities
* the European Space Agency Midas project
* Pilots
* F1 racing teams
* World rally teams (BP-FORD World Rally Team)
* Rescue and Lifeboat organisations
* Ferry companies
* fishermen
* paragliders
* windsurfers
The professional communities have been the first to embrace this service as they can see and continually test the quality of it, this has filtered into the leisure community and we have provided nearly 500k visitors a month with this unique service.
Our sister web site www.ProGRIB.com now offers a GRIB weather forecast service for all the theyr.net areas covered. This is available via a unique interface which provides the choice of three resolution, high (0.1), medium (0.5) and super high (0.02).
