Links to Forecast the Weather for Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico

WEATHER LINKS FOR THE LORETO, B.C.S. MEXICO AREA

Because our livlihood and safety is completely dependant on the weather, we have furthered our understanding and education on this subject during our years in operation. Its only within the last five years (due to availability of excellent weather products on the internet) that we´ve been able to forecast powerful tropical storms weeks in their advance. We now have plenty to time to prepare for them and when they hit or come close we're no longer taken by surprize.

In understanding how the weather will affect us in Loreto and before going out to sea we rely on an ever expanding combination of resources that are available online. These tools along with our experience in their interpretation and first hand observations, allow us to make very accurate predictions in regards to our local weather.

Below are many of those resources that you may find helpful:

SATELLITE IMAGE LINKS:

	NOAA GOES Eastern Pacific Visible Loop Animated visible satellite image of the eastern Pacific ocean and the Baja peninsula. This satellite image loop will help to visualize fronts in the winter months and it will enable early detection of tropical storm formation in the summer months.
	NOAA GOES Eastern Pacific Infared Channel 4 Loop Animated infared satellite image of the eastern Pacific ocean and the Baja peninsula. This loop loads faster than the visible loop. The IR loop helps to visualize precipitation and general trends.
	Pacific Tropical Satellite Imagery This is serious ONE STOP SHOPPING for all satellite images that will affect our sea surface conditions in the summer months. Tropical depressions, storms and cyclones are tracked and can be seen in excellent detail.
	CONAGUA (Mexican website in Spanish) This site has satellites for Mexico. The area that concerns us most is the GOES West satellite images.

WIND INDICATOR LINKS:

	Sailflow Once in this site you can set your "sailing area". We picked Baja California so now our area of interest pops up on entering the site. This site expanded its wind forecast to include up to an eight day forecast. Check daily as these change often in uncertain conditions, like transition time. Look for a general trend in the winds as well as velocity. Direction is also very important. If the trend is identical over several hours and the velocity is high then expect strong winds. If the trend changes so as opposing directions collide then calm conditions usually result. This site has been accurate for winter months conditions for the most part but summertime conditions seem to cnfuse it.
	Bouyweather This link will get you right into the map of the baja peninsula. From there you can get a day and a half forcast on winds and swell. For $99/year you will get the full service product. In three years of using this product we have found it to be more unreliable than not and prefer the Sailflow product.
	NOAA high density wind charts Click on the GOES West charts, time is expressed in zulu. You can focus on quadrants and enlarge the diagrams. The barbs on the station points face the direction of the wind and their number and form indicate intensity. We look for trends here especially when predicting Norte (North) winds in the winter months.
	NOAA high density wind based on satellite imagery The GOES West charts show high density wind patterns based on cloud drift and water vapor winds.

SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE (SST) CHARTS:

Terrafin Sea Surface Temperature Charts
This will bring you to the home page for Terrafin Software. To access all charts from Ancorage, Alaska to Bahias de Huatulco, Oaxaca, and from the Canadian Maritimes to the Yucatan Peninsula, the cost is only $99/year. Our studying the Loreto images and also our surrounding area's images enables us to determine which direction to go fishing on a particular day and what to expect in the days ahead. We go directly to temperature breaks and SST's we're looking to find instead of guessing. Our ability to do this ends up paying for the subscription rate many times over in fuel savings and time.

NOAA Sea Surface Temperature Imagery
This brings you to NOAA's SST imagery imagery for the East and West coast of North America. The NOAA SST Anomolies for 2007 are on this page. Sea Surface Anomalies are used to predict the El Nino - La Nina weather phenomenon. Links to previous years are at the bottom of this page.

EASTERN PACIFIC TROPICAL CYCLONE LINKS:

	The National Hurricane Center: Miami, Florida This is a good place to go for hurricane related information. Official forecasts and tracking of tropical depressions, storms and hurricanes are posted at this website. Tropical discussions and official public advisories of each storm are kept current here.
	Navy/NRL Tropical Cyclone Page. This page shows tropical storm tracking and forecasts. It also posts discussions and advisories.
	University of Wisconsin Tropical Cyclones Page We like this page as a consolidation of dozens of other sources on tropical weather events. When a major storm is coming our way we keep updated on postings made here.
	Weather Underground Tropical Weather Page The tropical page of Weather Underground has consolidated good information that we refer to when faced with a tropical weather event.

GENERAL WEATHER LINKS:

Weather Underground page for Loreto, BCS
This is a decent place to get a general idea of what to expect when you find yourself in Loreto. In the summer months the high temperatures tend to be posted on the low side though. In the winter months this site does not predict winds very well either.

iPilot
This website gives a pretty good prediction of what to expect in terms of wind, cloudcover and visibility for our area in the perspective of a pilot. You will need to register an account. Once registered click on flight planning then search for LTO (airport code for Loreto).

weather.com
This is a very general weather page for Loreto, BCS Mexico.

CONAGUA, the Mexican National Weather Service
(Mexican website in Spanish) This site provides the current temperature and wind for Loreto, BCS Mexico. Principal cities throughout Mexico this page lists major cities in MExico that you can find the current weather conditons. Here's the link for the main page for CONAGUA the Mexican National Weather Service. (site is in Spanish)

We welcome your suggestions to add weather related websites that aren't already listed here.
Please contact us here to suggest a new site