The information from the UW models is widely available. If this new service pulls it all together especially for boaters, then it should be worthwhile. I hope it will get updated as quickly as the UW models do.
The National Weather Service forecasts are generally good enough for me.
For excellent interpretation of the Northwest weather picture from a meteorologist's perspective is:
Cliff Mass teaches at the University of Washington.
A few weekends ago we had a severe and very damaging wind event predicted for Puget Sound. Cliff Mass did a model run Sunday morning and posted the result on his blog that morning. Based on that run, he concluded that the concentrated low was passing far enough north that it would result in winds in the 30 knot range, well below what had originally been predicted. There are good reasons why most of us in the region plan only a day or two out during the rowdier times of year.
BTW, over that weekend, I used Marinetraffic.com to follow wind reports from ships off the Washington, Oregon, BC coasts to see the storm's effects live. Max winds off the Columbia River peaked at 46 knots, a bit less at the west entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. There's enough commercial traffic in the region that MarineTraffic.com provides a useful supplement to the buoy and land based wind reports. I recently helped set up a Marine Traffic receiver on Cortes Island in Desolation Sound. We're set to improve the antenna's location and range in March 2014.
I'll be curious to see how the predictions do for very local wind conditions.
I hope the early adopters will let us know how it works out. A good succinct interpretation of conditions with boaters in mind could be very helpful indeed.