Understanding Wind And Weather Better With Your Baroscope - Vetus Meteoliner Anleitung

9 Understanding wind and weather
better with your baroscope
(Dieter Karnetzki, meteorologist)
How to use your Baroscope
Unlike a simple barometer, a baroscope not only tells you the cur-
rent atmospheric pressure, but also shows you what the atmos-
pheric pressure has been doing over the preceding few hours.
Constantly having to watch, read off and log the air pressure - as
on a simple old-fashioned barometer - is not only a nuisance, but
is also very prone to mistakes. This means that not even the most
conscientious skipper can really keep adequate track of the
movements in atmospheric pressure - and it is precisely this that
is the basis for any understanding of the weather situation, Iet
alone for well-founded weather forecasting.
If you want to use the air-pressure curve properly, you will need to
keep yourself informed on the overall weather situation. It is only
a second-rate skipper who willingly does without information that
would be readily available to him, so:
• Check out the current weathersituation first - e.g. on the radio
or TV, in the newspaper, or with the help of a weatherfax.
• After this, you can decide what your overall weather expecta-
tion will be. You may decide to go by the weather forecast on
the radio, for example, or by the harbour master's notice
board. You should always supplement this information with
your own observations, of course.
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• Now work out an air-pressure forecast from the weather fore-
cast. If the waather is to develop as the forecast has said it will,
then the air pressure should behave accordingly. In other
words, we already have a fair idea of how the air pressure is
going to develop!
• This IF...THEN relation is reversible. In this way, the baroscope
owner is able to make adequate weather predictions by
moniloring the development of atmospheric pressure.
This User Guide for owners of the Baroscope illustrates the
weather situations most frequently encountered in Europe, in
terms of their classic air-pressure curve patterns - as these are
actually traced by the Baroscope. See 'How to use the gale warn-
ing' for recommendations on the best settings for the gale warn-
ing!
Baroscope