We all spend some time in our day talking about the weather — whether it’s small talk with neighbors or our motoconcho driver, or fellow kiters and windsurfers. It’s important not only to see and interpret the skies and waves around you, but also to have a reliable source of information for later in the day or week so that you can plan your sessions around the most ideal conditions!
It makes us very happy to announce that GoKite Cabarete now has it’s very own WindGuru weather station right on Kite Beach, in addition to our GoKite Cabatete live webcam feed. Now you can always access the current forecast to plan the week or a future vacation; you can tune in directly to our site GoKiteCabarete.com to get live video of the beach and up-to-date weather feed of the current conditions!
We wanted to have this information available to us and to you because we love to kite, but also because of a huge appreciation for the natural world around us. We believe that, by having an understanding of the Earth’s natural processes, we can help bring this appreciation and education to others — and we are grateful for this technology that allows us to do so.
If you access our forecast from the GoKite weather station on WindGURU site, you will see our forecasts are displayed in tables which show how the weather will develop on a certain location in the next few days. The wind speed and direction are the most important, but it also shows temperature, precipitation, cloud cover and waves.
If you check our site, you’ll see the same information displayed as a real-time graph. We prefer this display because it offers you a more clear picture of what is happening, once you understand it of course!
How to read the data from GoKite Cabarete’s WindGuru Station (click the image to enlarge)
As you can see, this graph packs a lot of information into one small area. You can take account of the time of day, current temperature, when the sun rose, and most importantly, when the wind is going to get good or be at it’s best!
Here’s what’s most important for you to understand:
Wind speed: wind speed in 10 meters above surface
Wind direction: Sometimes tricky to get, but comes with practice and experience:
this is NORTH wind, it is the wind which blows FROM North.
Other example: south-west wind: Our wind is favourable like this:
Modified windspeed: The idea of “modified wind” is to estimate how good the wind will be at locations which are more sensitive to wind directions but the model does not realize it. Because of the landscape around Kite Beach the wind is better when it blows from the east, or sideonshore.
Wind gusts: wind gusts are normal when it gets breezy- but they will affect the smoothness and safety of your session because they create unpredictability. Gusty days may not be the best for an inexperienced rider to get out practicing.
Temperature: temperature in 2 meters above ground. The model only has a limited resolution so it only calculates with a smoothed terrain- ideal for beaches like ours.
Beaufort Windforce Scale: a standardized measure that relates the wind speed to observed conditions, in this case the waves on the sea, to know how conditions will affect steering a ‘sailed’ vessel. It may seem old school but this is actually quite relevant to the sail of your kite. For example, a ‘light breeze’ would be a light blue 2- enough to rustle the leaves and feel it on your skin. Yes the air is moving, but the glassy water and 3 knot winds are not enough to kite in. The ‘fresh breeze’ that occurs in the green zone at 5 is the sweet spot with 15-21 knots of wind and moderate waves with white caps for the surfers. Watch out when things get up into the orange zone and above- this is where winds surpass 40 knots and things get really dangerous. An interesting measurement system for sure!
We hope this explanation will help you better understand and use our site to read the forecast. However, as with any WindGURU station, we think it’s important to remind you that the forecasts you can see on this website are not official forecasts. (Windguru was developed in order to help people in forecasting.) What you see is only raw model data in human readable format, it’s up to you how to interpret it. Please note that models are only models — predicting weather is an extremely difficult task and these models are very complicated, if the forecasts are not perfect, it’s normal.
So, whether you’re far away and missing us here on Kite Beach, or if you’re already here in Cabarete and are still too hungover from last night’s mojitos to roll over and open the curtains — tune in to our live webcam and wind forecast now to get a live play by play of the weather and beach action!