Live data from Hacker News

Windy.com

windy.com

31–40 of 222 posts

Re: Windy.com

#31
This looks like the wind hits the West Coast of the United States and "turns" southwards. Is that accurate? If so, what causes it to do that?

Re: Windy.com

#32
post #14

over the past few years my use of weather apps + forecasting has really been improved by reading alongside them the local NWS office's "area forecast discussion"which is published multiple times a day by the station's meteorologists: https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?new&wfo=... It's really great to be able to contextualize the state of a Windy map, for example especially in Seattle where the weathe…

Great to see some love for Forecast Discussions! As a pilot, and overall outdoor enthusiast I've relied on Forecast Discussions for many years. If I may be so bold, my app Deep Weather for iOS is designed to be the most convenient and easy-to-read source for Forecast Discussions. It's free (with some more advanced/optional features requiring a subscription): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/deep-weather/id528748182

Re: Windy.com

#33
Windy is fantastic.

But, I'm curious if there are any apps or weather models that give probability distributions? Telling me that it is going to blow 10 mph is useful, but telling me, for example, that there is a 60% chance that there will be a 10 mph wind and a 40% chance that the wind will blow at 15 mph seems more in line with how I would naively assume weather forecasting works.

Right now, the ECMWF [0] model in Windy shows 6 mph winds gusting to 30 mph for my area (SE Alaska, with lots of mountains and fiords, so a area that is gusty and hard to predict by nature). It almost feels like they're throwing their hands up in the air and admitting that they have no idea what the wind will actually do today. Which, is fine, if that's the case.

I just wish consumer weather forecasts did a better job communicating probabilities and uncertainties instead of spitting out a single value.

[0] https://www.ecmwf.int/

Re: Windy.com

#34
This page needs some non-scrollable borders for mobile. Once you scroll down a bit into the map, it’s nearly impossible to get back to the browser ui controls

Re: Windy.com

#35

Windy is great. The map is appealing, but be sure to check out the forecast view for a particular location. Also make sure you try different locations. I'm in the Salish Sea on Orcas Island in the San Juans and because we have a lot of topography here mixed with ocean, we have a lot of local effects, contour winds and so on and there are big differences between locations. Also note that Windy can get it wrong. I grew…

You live in a beautiful area. I grew up scouting around there...on one trip we were invited to embark & leave Eastsound earlier than anticipated because a couple of our members decided to "casually" lift some cigars from a store there (IIRC). xD Thanks for the ATIS info too. I wonder if it's the same type of message I hear on non-noaa VHF from nearby.

Re: Windy.com

#36

Windy is great. The map is appealing, but be sure to check out the forecast view for a particular location. Also make sure you try different locations. I'm in the Salish Sea on Orcas Island in the San Juans and because we have a lot of topography here mixed with ocean, we have a lot of local effects, contour winds and so on and there are big differences between locations. Also note that Windy can get it wrong. I grew…

If you're in the US, you can get METARs from aviationweather.gov:

https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KSEA&format=d...

Re: Windy.com

#37
windy.com is great for forecasts, but you have to be careful of the model used for certain sports. (For example, the NAM model can be more accurate for low wind gusts.)

In my spare time over the last couple weeks I've been building a PWA for paramotor pilots to better visualize winds aloft: https://ppg.report.

Wind modeling - especially for aviation - is really an interesting subject. The main API I use at ppg.report is https://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/, lots fun to learn about (CIN, CAPE, the historical "soundings" manually reported from aircraft and balloons, versus the modern ones automatically pulling data from commercial flights.)

Re: Windy.com

#38
Does anyone know what Windy’s business model is?

I’m just curious because it’s not clear to me.

Re: Windy.com

#39

Windy is fantastic. But, I'm curious if there are any apps or weather models that give probability distributions? Telling me that it is going to blow 10 mph is useful, but telling me, for example, that there is a 60% chance that there will be a 10 mph wind and a 40% chance that the wind will blow at 15 mph seems more in line with how I would naively assume weather forecasting works. Right now, the ECMWF [0] model in…

ECMWF makes probabilistic forecasts, in the form of an ensemble of 50 IID examples. So this is mostly matter of Windy figuring out how to put that information into their UI.

Re: Windy.com

#40
I was on a HK island when Mankut hit and Windy was incredible. It was much easier to see when what was going to hit than the local news. For the village we were staying, the local news said 12 (noon) was the worst, but it was clear in windy that would be hours later. As this thing did a lot of damage, it was kind of nice to be able to predict it well.
Post reply on HN