Zezo forum:

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-19 | 13:17:21

"Beginning at 11 UTC on Tuesday, 10/20, the NOMADS Website (nomads.ncep.noaa.gov) and PARA NOMADS Website (para.nomads.ncep.noaa.gov) will be offline for network maintenance for up to six (6) hours."

Cventan, is this going to have any impact on the game or the router?

37 Comments

Post by zezo | 2020-10-20 | 04:54:04

"Hello NOMADS users,

The maintenance that was going to take down NOMADS and para.nomads tomorrow, 10/20, 11-17Z has been postponed due to issues in our College Park data center. We have no date yet for this to take place, but will let you know as soon as we know what the new date is."

Post by Hardtack | 2020-10-20 | 07:47:35

Insider joke: The new date will be Nov, 20 :-)

Post by GeGaX | 2020-10-20 | 09:38:35

🤣

Post by toxcct | 2020-10-20 | 10:07:57

I don't have it :o

Post by GeGaX | 2020-10-20 | 11:08:00

Check your spam folder 😉.

PS: I sent you an email for something else last night.

Post by toxcct | 2020-10-20 | 20:29:57

Replied...

Now can someone explain the joke, please ? :)

Post by GeGaX | 2020-10-20 | 21:13:31

NOAA sent 2-3 emails notifying the servers update except they gave the wrong month

Post by Tigrou26 | 2020-10-22 | 11:47:10

I think it is now, on the 22ndof October, 11h UTC !

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-22 | 15:52:37

Looks like it's for real this time. No update in router so far for 12Z.

Is the assumption that the game will continue to run on 06Z files until NOAA finishes their maintenance?

Post by zezo | 2020-10-22 | 21:25:17

"The network maintenance is still ongoing, the team believes that they have isolated the outstanding issue and are working to restore services. Once the network is restored we will need to power up the data center. Estimated return to service is 3 hours, or 2330 UTC.

We appreciate your patience. "

Post by zezo | 2020-10-22 | 21:33:19

Still down, as expected.

Downlading https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prod/... ...500 Can't connect to nomads.ncep.noaa.gov:443 (timeout)

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-22 | 22:26:04

Cvetan, when service is restored that will be in between normal updates. Will the router begin downloading new data when available, or wait till the next scheduled update?

Any idea what the game will do?

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-25 | 10:06:20

Cvetan, did you back date the forecast used?

At 10:00 UTC, the current forecast is showing as 12Z, and the new update that's loading is labelled t18z + 189. Is that 18z Friday or Saturday?

Current wind direction in the game exactly matches what the router exects in both races.

Post by zezo | 2020-10-25 | 10:13:45

Friday. And it won't update again until we see the game weather updating.

VR outage could be related to that maintenance, but the current grib in use comes after it. The outage was during 20201022 06z and 12z

Post by zezo | 2020-10-25 | 20:12:09

It might be NOAA after all. I'm using the mentioned index files, but maybe the VR (or their data provider) don't:

Quote:
-------------

NOMADS users,

The data center network maintenance that took place on 10/22 has caused many unexpected issues. Beginning early today our system admins began to troubleshoot reports of both the Opendap and Grib Filter services being unresponsive. Unfortunately, with the complexity of the issues within the data center, the team was unable to restore the services. At this time, both OpenDap and Grib Filter services are down. We will continue to persevere through this incredibly impactful outage and work as quickly as we can to recover NOMADS.

As a mitigation to the broken services, users can still download full files over https. Or leverage the idx files with the fast downloading method, explained here:

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/wesley/fast_downloading_grib.html

We appreciate the impact this outage is having on our users, and apologize for the disruption.
--------------

Post by YourMomSA | 2020-10-26 | 15:33:23

Any more news on this? In Bermuda, I've been counting on a sudden huge adjustment to make my stupid move to stay south suddenly look smart...

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-26 | 16:09:33

If and when we do revert to live weather, it's going to be a 40 degree header. I gave up positions to move to the top of the pack to prepare, but at this point, I'm thinking it's all for naught and we'll probably be on an old forecast till the finish.

Pretty sure the problems emanate with NOAA, who have said nothing about an eta for the fix.

BTW, in the VR forum, they've already announced this is another beta race that won't count for VSR. If you have a FP for this race it will carry over to the next one, that they've hinted will start later this week.

Post by YourMomSA | 2020-10-26 | 16:22:46

Thanks for that info! I haven't been particularly concerned with VSR, but it would still be annoying to lose 20 VSR points on a Cat 6 race.

I saw in a different VR thread that they carry a 7-day reserve of wind... You can see the impact... If you look in-game at their forecasts for Day 6 and 7... They're identical now to Day 5.

Post by yetanotherone | 2020-10-26 | 16:20:55

Yes, definitely, there is a problem with NOAA, as I used to use the Grib filter for 0.25 degrees weather download for my own router (it's much faster as I download only the needed coordinates for a race). And I am stuck since the start of the maintenance ...

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-26 | 16:46:13

Just now,

"Hello NOMADS Users,

We have resolved some of the issues with Grib Filter and OpenDap but are still validating all services are fully functional. "

Post by YourMomSA | 2020-10-26 | 16:47:04

Interesting. I wonder if VR will catch up suddenly or not until the next forecast update 5 more hours from now.

Post by tabasco2 | 2020-10-26 | 17:09:03

Wow, VR updated the wind for 5 minutes and they went back to the previous one.

Post by Hardtack | 2020-10-26 | 17:11:24

If I'm reading the Dashboard data correctly, they've already updated the forecast, but not for all boats at the same time.
I see boats close to each other, both at TWA 140, but with headings differing by 25� and wind speed differing by 6kn. For example, BooBill and I are in the old wind, NeptuneIST and FreizhVolante are in the new wind.

Post by Toppen | 2020-10-26 | 17:15:23

VR doing a fantastic, professional job as always...

The wind speed and direction in the GUI is not correct, correct? According to the Dashboard i have 2 knots more wind speed and the wind is coming 15 degrees more from the North, how is that even possible?

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-26 | 17:23:24

Wholly shit. That's what's going on. I just accepted a match race challenge from someone half a mile off my port side, who's now heading 25 degrees more north than me.

Post by zezo | 2020-10-26 | 18:06:07

Yep. VR are serving different references.bin (file, describing which weather files are in use) to different clients. Like one in my browser and another from a command line tool.

Probably a cdn/caching issue.

I'm switching the update back on now, so you should probably disregard the UI and follow the router.

Post by blkhd48 | 2020-10-26 | 18:19:43

I'm further N than than the 'good guys group and have been patiently waiting for VR to catch up with the GFS wind as shown on Windy. windy didn't update for 12 hrs or so a couple of days ago, but since then it looked to me like it was updating every 6 hours as normal. A few hrs ago I should of had 28 kts, a lot more than any one further S Instead I've much less wind and had 2 or 3 kts less than those further S. The Zezo router has quite rightly been been giving me a much more southerly route based on the Friday forecast that VR seems to be stuck with. Bad enough that they don't work weekends, nor Mondays it seems.
VR's claim that we all race in 'real ' wind looks like a load of bollocks

Post by zezo | 2020-10-26 | 18:35:55

This time it seems that it was NOAA who were not working on weekends.

Post by BooBill | 2020-10-26 | 18:39:44

blkhd48 - See the earlier discussion in the thread. The game has been running on the Friday 18Z forecast since then. On Saturday Cvetan backdated the router to match.

VR is switching over to the current forecast, but not everyone at the same time. Some are on old, some on new.

I just realized that my client and the Dashboard were off by 22 degrees wind angle.

And now it just switched over from one refresh to the next.

Post by Antoine17-42 | 2020-10-26 | 18:56:33

Hi,
Same for me here ; I was still on the old grib, then switched to the new one. I gybed, and now back again to the old grib. A real mess, pfffff....

Post by Robot_Rock | 2020-10-26 | 19:12:35

Same here, dont worry...

Big thanks to zezo for his good work and keeping us updated during this clusterfuck...

The "not fun" part, is that they still have a ton of correction to apply and we wont be able to test them.

Post by YourMomSA | 2020-10-26 | 19:23:34

Ouch. I need to gybe and get to the leaders' present position 5 hours from now. BooBill, where did you see VR's statement that this race won't count for VSR? I stand to lose 30-40+ VSR points if this counts.