Love windy.com, it is great for big weather events, but I have found it going a bit off for day-to-day weather...
Windy.com
211–220 of 222 posts
Re: Windy.com
#212Windy 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…
"Also note that Windy can get it wrong." I kind of lost trust in it, when I was in the middle of a thunderstorm, yet windy showed me all sunny. Granted, it was in the alps and forcasting there is hard, but it was the current state of things they got wrong.
It's not realtime, some of the underlying models only get updated every 6 hours.
Re: Windy.com
#213Other than the canonical "Do I bring an umbrella?" we have one actionable need for precise weather forecasting:
In hot weather I have outfit our California house with an assortment of commercial (quiet whole-house exhaust) and homebuilt (computer fan arrays in each window) fans. We rarely use air conditioning even in extreme heat, instead waiting till outdoor air is cooler than inside air to open up the house overnight. It's important to hang box fans between rooms to stir the air as much as possible; one is storing coolth in the walls. People are always surprised we're not on AC when they come inside the next afternoon.
As we're both on east coast schedules I sometimes have to set an alarm to get up and open up the house. This is guesswork. Better forecasting would really help. I don't see any multimodel tools in any of these paid apps that give me a better view, zooming in on this precise question, than a generic hourly forecast by the usual suspects.
(New construction near us forces a reliance on AC. One would think that in regions with good daily temperature swings, designing a house like a water-cooled computer would make sense. We should be seeing as many rooftop radiators as solar panels. Not a thing...)
Re: Windy.com
#214Windy 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 Pacific Northwest, specifically Washington/Western Washington, then UW's weather models reach much higher spatial resolution than Windy appears to do. https://a.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/ I recommend starting with the 4km or 1.3km WRF-GFS model and looking at something like 3hr Precip.
Windy also has HRRR (among others) for hi res near term domestic US incorporating radar.
https://windy.app/features/hrrr-weather-forecast-model.html
Other models:
https://windy.app/guide/windy-app-weather-forecast-models.ht...
Re: Windy.com
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
for people who live in europe, try AROME, it's very limited compared to the other models, but it does (IMO) give the best forecast. in my experience AROME tends to forecast on the drier side of the weather. Since I'm in the UK I use AROME first and flick between ECMWF. (ECMWF tends to forecast on the wetter side!!) for the next hour(s) forcast, I tend to use rain radar - windy has this, but it's not the best I use ne…
I'll add in a vote for the UK Met Office here too (particularly for the UK). AROME is a high resolution 'nested' model, where the region of interest is simulated at a higher resolution that the (often global) driving model. Similar to ICON-D2 (Germany [0])and UKV (UK [1]). These will typically produce a better downscale of the forecast to a local area. Their utility depends a bit on what is causing the uncertainty in…
I would love to see the UK Met Office model in Windy
I don't know why it's not there - I'm assuming it costs money
Re: Windy.com
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off topic: I am interested in off-shore solar resources. Are there raw historic datasets or nice visualization for solar irradiation including over seas and oceans ?
There is a startup in Norway called Glint Solar that may help. They serve the floating solar industry with geospatial tools and data, both on reservoirs and offshore. If you can expand a bit on your questions, there may be more resources to point to.
Currently interested in year-round solar irradiation data for seas and oceans (mostly over shipping lanes)
It seems that out to sea (over 100 km from shore) solar actually weakens due to humidity/clouds?
Re: Windy.com
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> , find a nearby airport, get their ATIS (or AWOS or ASOS) phone number and you can call and get a real-time report. Obviously it's current weather, not forecast, but it's often helpful. The US Government makes both METARs (current report) and TAFs (area forecast) available online. You can also get PIREPs (pilot reports) if you are interested in the conditions in the air.
Along with free APIs! (XML, though.) https://www.aviationweather.gov/dataserver
that’s neat! thanks for mentioning it.
Re: Windy.com
#218over 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
nice app! I seem to have gotten myself stuck, though. In weather graphics I opened up day 4 fronts and now I can zoom around on it but there is no way to close it and the rest of the app is blocked!
Anyway, just a small bug report. Thanks for the app, useful enough to keep it installed!
Re: Windy.com
#219Other than the canonical "Do I bring an umbrella?" we have one actionable need for precise weather forecasting: In hot weather I have outfit our California house with an assortment of commercial (quiet whole-house exhaust) and homebuilt (computer fan arrays in each window) fans. We rarely use air conditioning even in extreme heat, instead waiting till outdoor air is cooler than inside air to open up the house overnig…
Outdoor sports is a big one. For kite and wind surfing, you want a lot of wind, for sailing moderate winds and for golf or wakeboard you want no wind.
Re: Windy.com
#220Other than the canonical "Do I bring an umbrella?" we have one actionable need for precise weather forecasting: In hot weather I have outfit our California house with an assortment of commercial (quiet whole-house exhaust) and homebuilt (computer fan arrays in each window) fans. We rarely use air conditioning even in extreme heat, instead waiting till outdoor air is cooler than inside air to open up the house overnig…
Isn't a rooftop water-cooling radiator just a swamp cooler? Common in dry climates.