Gear & Outfitting

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach of us more than we can ever learn from books.”

–John Lubbock

Weather Radio Broadcast Cheat Sheet

banner weather forecast

Weather is one of the biggest hazards we face as Sea Kayakers. Sometimes we take for granted the endless stream of weather information at our fingertips. We can get up to the minute observations, forecasts, satellite images, radar images all from our computers and smartphones but what happens when you are on a trip and no longer have access to the Internet, TV, or Radio.

As part of our regular kit you should seriously consider purchasing a handheld, marine, VHF-FM radio. Not only can you use it to call for help, or talk to your mates, but the most important feature is they have channels specifically tuned to NOAA Weather Radio (NWR). Guess what, Canada also has this service as well.

This means you can get the weather forecast, current observations, the extended forecast, and synopsis for the area you are paddling in. When you first start listening to the broadcast, it sounds like it is in a foreign language. The voice is an automated computer and if you are not familiar with the area you are paddling in, the locations they list will be foreign to you.

On a recent trip I took in British Columbia, a paddle mate produced a BC Weather Guide, a cheat sheet of sorts to help you understand the forecast and the areas they are talking about. This is brilliant, I thought! We pulled it out on just about every broadcast we listened to to help us see the big picture.

When we returned home I scoured the NOAA website looking for something similar for Washington State and found nothing. I then sat down and listened to NWR at home over and over again making notes and created my own cheat sheet for NWR Broadcasts here in the Pacific Northwest. I am making both available for download. You can print them and laminate them to take with you while on the water.

WA-NWR-Ref BC-Weather-Ref