This paper focuses on the use of scanning lidars for very short-term forecasting of wind speeds in a near-coastal area. An extensive data set of offshore lidar measurements up to 6 km has been used for this purpose. Using dual-doppler measurements, the topographic characteristics of the area have been modelled. Assuming Taylor's frozen turbulence and applying the topographic corrections, we demonstrate that we can forecast wind speeds with more accuracy than the benchmarks persistence or ARIMA.