Anyone else think that since the 98 Hobart catastrophe that the BOM forecasts always err on the strong side for wind? e.g - play it safe & cover themselves..
Thats the name of the BOM game mate
Windguru,Windfinder and Seabreeze are much more consistent for us except in the case of local effect like sea breezes here in Vic.
Yep they do, they gotta cover their posterias legalwise these days. I generally halve what they say, then add a little bit ie/ 20-30 knots = 13-17 knots. They do stipulate that forecasts are for 10 minute averages, and that gusts may be 40% stronger, so basically they're saying "this is what we think will happen, but let's get real here it's nature we're trying to predict and anything can and will happen (eg/ the '98 Hobart "weatherbomb") so if you're going out on the water then prepare yourself for any eventuality, just like common sense says you should do anyway."
The BOM has certainly been adding in disclaimers, for the time i've been observing the weather they have tended to over-state.
I don't trust any of it though... having studied meteorology at uni I can say it is pretty much the least precise field of science i've been involved with and despite being one of the courses I did quite well in I have no idea about the weather 
. There are too many variables to evaluate overnight and realistically forecasting has never received good funding. The BOM's predictions will certainly continue to increase in accuracy with the modelling available today. It is quite odd though that in Australia the systems seem quite large, minimal localised effects- we don't tend to care much about the weather and forecasting is poor. Compared to say NZ which appeared to have much more complex systems but many seemed more weather conscious also, don't know if this is exactly true more just the impression I got when I was there.
You would think that it wouldn't be too difficult with the cleverness of AI to come up with a trainable "inference engine" (i believe they are called). You feed in all the data that matters. The engine spits out a prediction. The prediction's deviation from the actual conditions that eventuate are fed back in as correction weightings that qualify the next prediction. You do this every day for a couple of years and the predictions just get more and more accurate. I suppose the boffins have thought of this though.
That is what has happened, but remember alot of cycles affect the weather that are 8+ years apart. Whilst continental effects of el nino/la nina for example are quite old, applying that to global patterns is relatively recent. Then factor in large scale climate, progress and enviromental changes- the weather we saw in an area 30 years ago can be significantly different from today.
Of course. You'd have to go for many years wouldn't you. It can only get better.
The BOM did issue a storm warning as the 98 Sydney Hobart race was started. A storm is defined as an average wind of 53-59 knots. A 92 knot gust was recorded at Wilson's Prom - but it is usually reckoned that the anemometer up there on the bluff reads a bit high, so it was not proven that the gusts on the water exceeded 40% more than 59 knots (83 knots).http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ANZMLJ/2002/6.pdf
The BOM appears to have got it right on that day.
