What would this represent?

Question

On a surface weather map, what source would a station model located 300 km west of California represent? Would it represent a ship, a buoy, or something else?

Answer 1

Go to the following link.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/rmd.shtml

You will find a interactive map.  Click on the map to zoom in to a smaller area map with all the different types of buoys are plotted.  Click on any of the active buoys to get the most recent observations.   See if the data matches the data you get here.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/maps/Northwest....

If it does not, you can look for a ships observation and see if it is the same data you have.  For a list of shipping observation data, see the following link.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ship_obs.php

Ships and buoys usually gives out different types of weather data.  With a ship, you will usually get data that a human weather observer will give you.  

Here are a few examples...

Ships with an observer will give you sky condition, type of precipitation, and coded comments of important weather observed by the eye of the observer...like "sky dark to the west" or "hail 1 inch in diameter" or "thunderstorm east moving west"

A buoy will give you sea surface temperature, tide reading,  estimated wave length and height.  

Buoys report observations every hour and drifts and/or nearly always in the same spot.

Also ships move so the observation taken ever 3 to 12 hours would be at a different spot each time.  Print out several hours of data observation maps or run a loop of the plotted data and see if the observation plotted on the map changes location with time.

The one of the best CA offshore data web links page go to the following link...

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr/buoy.php

Hope you will find this information useful.

Answer 2

It's mostly likely a weather buoy, unless it's a military weather reconnisance ship (highly unlikely)

  

Since I cannot think of any islands 300 kilometers west of California on which there'd be a weather base, this is almost certainly it.