Wednesday 24 June 2009

Weather Forecasts In Croatia

Adriatic Sea - DHMZ

We recently had an email from a reader unsure as to how the areas of Croatia were identified in weather forecasts. Croatian weather and forecasts are covered in pages 8 and 9 of the introduction to the Croatia Cruising Companion and VHF broadcasts will normally identify a city - Split or Šibenik for example. However on sites such as The Croatian Meteorological And Hydrological Service, references are made to the Northern, Central and Southern Adriatic.

We have taken the liberty of including the map from the above website to show that, in fact, readers sailing in the area covered by the Croatia Cruising Companion need mostly focus on the Central Adriatic Region, though the small area of Croatia, south of Dubrovnik, falls in the Southern Adriatic region.

This classification of regions is not to be confused with the division of the Dalmatian region into Northern, Middle and Southern Dalmatia. The whole of Dalmatia is covered by the Croatia Cruising Companion and Dalmatia, as a whole, can roughly be said to equate to the Central Adriatic Region above.

These definitions probably sound more complicated than they are. In practice you will find that every marina has a daily weather report available for the area, and most tourist offices will print these out on demand. Plovput are responsible for the radio broadcast of weather and navigational information and operate three radio stations – Rijeka, Split and Dubrovnik – which broadcast this information 3 times a day in English.

The Croatian Tourist Board also has a good weather map on its site for looking at the weather in specific destinations. We’re sorry to see that today, whilst the UK is basking in sunshine for the opening days of Wimbledon, the whole of the Croatian coast seems to be suffering from “variably cloudy with thundershowers”!

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