The New Way to Get Weather Faxes

Ever since the Marine Prediction Center started making their faxes available on the Internet we've been downloading them one-at-a-time whenever we were interested in what was going on around the world. Onboard it was the ssb/weather fax combination until this past spring, when we used a Globalstar phone to get the most up-to-date data via the Internet.

For some time there's been an even better system for "volume" users like us. This is a semi-automated process where you send an e-mail to the Marine Prediction Center's computer server, requesting a series of fax charts and/or satellite images, and their server returns these to you within a few minutes. Believe me, it saves a bunch of time (and if you're using a satellite phone, time really IS money!).

The process is quite simple. All you need to do is send an e-mail with a few lines of code, and then insert a request for the charts you wish to receive. Send the e-mail, and shortly thereafter the requested charts/satellite views will be returned to you via e-mail (one chart or satellite view per e-mail).

We usually are checking the weather somewhere almost every day when we're on land, to keep up with a feel for the weather "rhythm" of the period. What works for us is to keep a series of e-mails in the "drafts" folder of our Microsoft Outlook email program. Each draft has the contents of each region or a group of regions which we are after. We send out copies of these each morning when we first start the computer, and then check out the data after breakfast.

This may sound a little intimidating, but it is actually quite simple. Try it yourself. The proper code and e-mail address are noted below. The Marine Prediction Center has also created a list for us which has the file name and a description of each of their products. So, all you have to do is copy what you want from this page, and then send the e-mails.

Here's the e-mail address: ftpmail@weather.noaa.gov

Then, in the body of the e-mail message write:

open
cd fax

Next, type in (or copy and paste from this article) a list of the products you want sent back to you, with the word "get" at the beginning of each line. For example:

get PWAE98.TIF
get PJAI99.TIF
get PJAM98.TIF
get PYEA85.TIF

Finally, on the last line type:

quit.

The entire e-mail message might look like the following:

Note: The message needs to be case-sensitive, so be sure to capitalize the file names and make the rest of the words lower case.

There are two common file types available--TIF and GIF. The TIF files are much smaller and in almost all cases are the best choice. The one exception to this is the tropical chart (PYEA85) which looks OK in GIF format on the computer screen, but looks a little fuzzy when printed out. When we're using a land line to download these files, we request the tropical chart as a GIF file (i.e., PYEA85.GIF) and then have to reduce it to 50% when printing on our laser printer. However, using the satellite phone, we get all files in .TIF format.

Products Available

Click here for a list of the various products available from the Marine Prediction Center with this process. Even though these are broadcast from different radio stations, they all come from the same address. You can combine your request--for example, heading towards the Caribbean from the East Coast you would want some of the Tropical products broadcast from New Orleans, along with the extratropical products which are from Boston.

Schedule

For a schedule of the time of day each of these various Marine Prediction Forecasts is available, click here.