And now, the Shipping Forecast

How to understand the shipping forecast

After a general synopsis, the forecast goes clockwise through the zones around the UK and Irish coastlines, starting with Viking in the northeast, to Southeast Iceland in the northwest.

There are four categories for each zone's area forecast, in order:

• Wind - direction and speed, based on the Beaufort scale, from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane). Changes in wind direction are either veering (clockwise) or backing (anti-clockwise).
• Sea State - also uses the Beaufort scale, but using the sea descriptive terms. For 0, the sea is described as "Calm", all the way to 12, "Phenomenal".
• Weather - pretty self explanatory, it's the weather.
• Visibility - measured on a scale between "Good" (greater than 5 nautical miles), to "Fog" (less than 1000m).

An additional can be found on the Met Office site, and Wikipedia has a pretty detailed breakdown too if you want to know more!

That's pretty much it! Also, the forecast I'm reading is directly from the Met Office. Since I'm just doing this myself, I'm not following the exact pattern you might hear on the radio, but it's close enough.

sleep tight!!