In the good old days I used to pore over atmospheric pressure charts kindly provided online by the likes of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF for short) before making a decision on exactly where and when to go surfing.  Here's what they are revealing to me today:

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Unfortunately the weekend's forecast for the future of Hurricane Jova seems to be have been quite accurate. According to Reuters this morning:

Jova will make landfall on Tuesday afternoon or evening to the northwest of Manzanillo near the resort towns of Melaque and Barra de Navidad, on a stretch of coast dotted with beaches south of Puerto Vallarta.

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We're a bit behind on our reporting of the progress of Hurricane Ophelia, because we've been frantically busy here in South West England launching our latest project, which is entitled "Contemporary Art in the Community". More on all that soon, but for now we must firstly apologise to Bermudan resident Tina Barnard who gave us and our other readers some extremely sound advice on how to survive if a hurricane should ever head in the direction of you and your loved ones.

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Back in January the Association of Surfing Professionals announced their controversial decision to hold:

The first-ever ASP World Tour stop on the East Coast of the United States,  set to take place on Long Island’s Long Beach from September 4-15. The event will offer a $1 million dollar prize purse to competitors, an amount unprecedented in professional surfing.

According to the initial press release:

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Kelly Slater has just won the world tour event in Puerto Rico, and with it his tenth world surfing championship.

The contest was suspended for two days earlier this week because three times world champion Andy Irons had just died. In his hotel room, apparently of dengue fever.

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In February 2005  I went on a surfing trip to the Caribbean. Since I speak English rather than French I went to Barbados rather than Haiti, and made a pilgrimage to Bathsheba on the east coast. According to Kelly Slater, the "Tiger Woods" of surfing, and 9 times world champion:

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This weeks edition of the Economist contains a long article on the suddenly hot topic of "Open Data". The subhead sums up the issue like this:

In several countries more official data are being issued in raw form so that anybody can use them. This forces bureaucrats and creative types to interact in new ways.

and the article points out that:

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Hurricane Bill, the first of the 2009 Atlantic season, has already got surfers in the eastern United States excited.  Over here in South West England we're eagerly watching the current predictions:

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The remnants of Hurricane Hanna arrived on the shores of South West England last weekend. Hanna still packed a bit of a punch, as you can see in this video that we shot at Woolacombe on Sunday:

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On January 4th we drove to Putsborough Beach on the Atlantic Coast of North Devon to check out what the forecasts suggested would be some excellent surf.  We also took along our Sony Handycam to see how it performed when trying to film moving targets.  You can see the results in the video below.

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