Currents at Depth

More detail

What you see. This layer shows how much of the flow reaches down to the depth you fish. The colors run from dark purple for still water through blue, green and yellow to dark red for the fastest. The layer uses the same color scale as Currents, from still water to about 3.4 knots. On the website the crosshair readout gives the speed in knots when your distance unit is nautical miles. Depths read in feet by default, and in meters if you switch in Preferences.

How to use it. To see weaker flow more clearly, lower the top of the Range in Layer Settings. In Layer Settings you can also change the Colormap and the Opacity. For direction, turn on the Currents button on the bottom bar. It is what the short description above calls the Current Particles animation. With the Forecast tab chosen in Data Layers, its moving arrows or streaks follow the forecast current at the depth you pick.

How it relates to the other current layers. Currents is the same forecast at the surface. Currents (DUACS) and Currents (GlobCurrent) are worked out from satellite measurements and are surface only. Water Temperature at Depth and Salinity at Depth come from the same forecast. Step all three to one depth to read the water at the level you fish.

Who makes it. RipIQ makes this layer itself from the forecast current of HYCOM (U.S. Navy model) at each depth. The layer covers the Gulf of America, the East Coast and Baja.

Its limits. There are eight frames a day, three hours apart. The newest frame is from a run started between one and four days ago, and the time slider reaches up to 7 days ahead as a forecast.

The numbers

How often it updates	Once a day, as 8 frames three hours apart
How fresh it usually is	The newest frame is from a run started between one and four days ago
How detailed it is	About 5 nautical miles per grid cell; from the surface down to 656 feet
Where it covers	Gulf of America, East Coast and Baja
How far back you can look	8 days back
How far forward you can look	Up to 7 days ahead, as a forecast
Goes blank under cloud?	Never
Observed or modeled	Calculated by RipIQ from HYCOM (U.S. Navy model) fields
What you see on screen	Speed only, no direction, at the depth you pick. On the website the readout is in knots when your distance unit is nautical miles. The color scale tops out at about 3.4 knots

Source: computed by RipIQ from HYCOM model currents at depth.