Expedition provides an abundance of tools for downloading weather data.  Which mechanism and source you use will depend on your location, your purpose and whether you want to pay for premium sources.  Of course there is value in retrieving multiple weather models to compare and to improve confidence in the weather predictions.

Lets start with the basics and then explore some more elaborate alternatives.

Step #1:  Click on Wx Data on the main menu, and select Expedition as your Grib Data source.  Now left click and drag on the chart to highlight an area for your forecast.

Step #2: The next dialog presents a conisderable range of options for weather models and for data ranges.  Lets select the GFS 0.11 Model for now.  You can choose the number of days yuo want to download in the presented dropdown.  Different models offer different periods of time and resolution.  Click download.  Note the dialog box shwoing 'connecting', when the download is complete the dialog box will dissappear.  If you choose a very large area, or higher resolution the download will take more time.  This wont be much of a consideration when you are at home, but if at sea and dependent on satellite based internet, you will need to be more selective.

You may not see any thing initially, possibly because you have not selected a current time frame.

Step #3:  Click on Weather on the main menu.  And in the Display Time section, hit Now.

You shoudl see a representation of the weather using barbs, colors, shading etc.  If you dont, try clicking on the WindFlow button on the main menu.  This will override the display settings.

Display Settings for weather are powerful and complicated and will be dealt with elsewhere.

Step #4:  Click on Show Tooltip.  Then, as you hover over any area of the chart you can see the forecasted weather at that location at the time selected.


More Options: GRIB Sources

Expedition has built up its own collection of GRIB sources in the last few years and is usually the most convenient location to pull your GRIBs from.  This includes ECWMF, ICON, GFS, AROME and other models.  The server is fast, reliable and up to date.  And the data is all free!

Great Circle is a premium GRIB source service targeted at the racing professional.  The models are higher resolution and higher frequency.

Saildocs is another good source of standard weather models and overlaps to a large extent with the Expedition GRIB server.  It includes some mode tidal and wave models also.

WRF is another set of high resolution GRIBs specific to Expedition that take account of local thermal and land effects.  They are generally available in areas where other higher resolution models might not be available.   They are made available for specific regattas and events (Americas Cup, Olympics, etc.)

Other Sources for GRIBs are available but will likely only be used for specialist purposes or for comparisons.  An exception is PredictWind, this is a good source for detail forecasting information and is built on top of the standard GFS and ECWMF models.  This is a paid source so if you have a subscription you can enter your credentials here, and download as you need.

Tidetech is another premium source for Tidal information.  Tides and other marine forecast data is downloaded in exactly teh same way as the weather, just select your area of interest and download an approriate model.