Region Names
The sea areas covering the waters around the British Isles are as defined by the map shown here:
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The areas were roughly as listed above by 1949. Later modifications include the introduction of Fisher in 1955, when Dogger was split in two. Heligoland was renamed German Bight a year later.
Around 1983, the Minches sea area was merged with Hebrides.
In 1984, the areas in the North Sea were coordinated with those of neighbouring countries, introducing North Utsire and South Utsire and reducing Viking in size.
Finisterre was renamed FitzRoy (in honour of the founder of the Met Office) in 2002, to avoid confusion with the (smaller) sea area of the same name used in the marine forecasts produced by the French and Spanish meteorological offices.
Some names still differ; for example, the Dutch KNMI names the area equivalent to Forties after the Fladen bank, while Météo-France calls the English Channel sea areas Dover, Wight, Portland, and Plymouth respectively Pas de Calais, Antifer, Casquets, and Ouessant.
In the forecast, areas are named in a roughly clockwise direction, strictly following the order above. However, a forecast for Trafalgar is found only in the 0048 forecast - other forecasts do, however, report when there are warnings of gales in Trafalgar.
Read more about this topic: Shipping Forecast
Famous quotes containing the words region and/or names:
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)