The usefulness of XM and Sirius weather FORECASTS have been questioned here.
I have no experience with them, but I did have a ten-minute exposure to a
Sirius CURRENT weather radar picture that proved quite useful.

We were anchored off Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas in April, and I had
been planning a direct run of 109 miles to the NNE to Naples when I started
getting whiffs on the VHF marine weax channels about unsettled weather
farther north on the Florida peninsula.  I could get several stations, but
there was no comment on any of them about the larger picture.  The gist of
it was that a line of heavy thunderstorms was moving through Tampa Bay
(nothing unusual 'bout that) and that conditions to the south were more
benign.  What I couldn't get a handle on was what was likely to be happening
across my proposed track.

Then an acquaintance from Panama City came rowing up telling me that I might
want to look at his Sirius weather picture in his laptop which was
downloaded via his sat phone.  I had had no idea this gent was within 700
miles until he just showed up.

Upon viewing the big radar picture on his computer, I saw an angry-looking
crescent of weather spread across the peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico.
When he put it in motion it was clear to me that this thing had a lot of
energy, a lot of speed, and probably would not be dying out before it got to
our latitude.  I didn't ask for any upper air charts etc, etc; I just saw
this thing barreling down the peninsula and knew that we could not stay in
the relatively exposed anchorage any longer and that we could not go north.

The only option was east to Key West, and an hour later we left about twenty
boats and headed out alone for the 8-9 hour east.  We bashed along through
some rough water for a few hours and made our slip at Boca Chica at 2100,
just as the storm hit.  A later report by another boat that stayed behind
told of mayhem in the anchorage including beached boats, holed trawler, etc,
etc.

While we do not normally find ourselves beyond either protected waters
and/or internet contact, if I were regularly going to places like the Dry
Tortugas or farther afield, I would be investing in a Sirius satellite
weather system such as my friend had.

Rich Gano
CALYPSO (GB-42 #295)
Southport, FL (near Panama City)

The guy whose laptop I looked at for ten minutes called it "Sirius Weather."
It certainly looked like the radar picture you can get looking at a NOAA
site.  I was in too much of a hurry getting out of harm's way to enquire any
farther.

-----Original Message-----
From: Warren Keuffel [mailto:wkeuffel@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2009 9:54 PM

I have Sirius Weather on my Raymarine but have found it to be of
limited usefulness. I  certainly have not been able to get anything
like the information you described getting. I would appreciate it if
you, or anyone else reading this, could point me toward a tutorial on
how to get the most out of my Sirius investment (sorry for the bad pun.)

Warren

Good morning again,

More from the website FAQ:

"Also, PC users can receive SIRIUS Marine Weather using WxMate receivers
from AirGator, Inc. AirGator's WxMate weather software provides an easy to
use weather viewing application for the PC, whereas Jeppesen Marine's
Nobeltec line of marine navigation software seamlessly integrates SIRIUS
Marine Weather into their full function navigation package."

So it appears you have a number of options for either chartplotter or
PC/laptop

CHeers

Mike Eedy
North Bay
http://www.sirius.com/marineweather