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Windy.com

windy.com

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Re: Windy.com

#91

Post by aasasd »

I occasionally meditated for a bit upon a similar map on Yandex Weather—finally understood what the deal with Siberia is. Like, in spring it's way below zero around Mongolia, while it's on the same latitude as Black Sea where it can already be +20°C. Well, turns out I can clearly see warm air moving from the Atlantic eastwards—until it hits the Urals and stops, and everything beyond that is frozen tundra. Warm air from the Pacific somehow barely reaches Siberia, deciding to turn east or west instead.

Really nice to just watch this on the screen in realtime.

Also in the rain map, it's fun to look at huge clouds spanning entire Europe. Especially if my city is precisely in a small window of clear skies amid the rains.

Re: Windy.com

#92

Post by oxml »

mmaunder wrote: post #29

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…

I live a couple islands over from you. As a frequent sailor, I use Windy regularly before a race, but it's never completely accurate (PredictWind tends to be better). Great for looking at general trends and visualizing patterns. This area is tricky — lots of microclimates for the reasons you mentioned and it's almost impossible for a service like Windy to be completely accurate.

Re: Windy.com

#94

Post by drcoopster »

mmaunder wrote: post #29

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 can also get the METAR (observations updated hourly) from the Aviation Weather Center: https://aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KORS&format=decod...

Re: Windy.com

#95

Post by aidenn0 »

mmaunder wrote: post #29

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…

I live less than 3 miles from an airport, but due to microclimates the weather is completely different. The NOAA does a reasonable job of forecasting my specific area, but most weather apps will take the current conditions from the airport, which can be off by over 10F in temperature alone.

Re: Windy.com

#96

Post by nharada »

sealaska wrote: post #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…

If you click on a specific location, at the bottom you can expand the forecast. Instead of "Basic" select "Wind" which will let you see multiple model forecasts. Not exactly a probability but you can do some mental ensembling to see if models agree or not.

https://imgur.com/a/UezBGqZ

Re: Windy.com

#97

Post by EMM_386 »

mmaunder wrote: post #29

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…

> , 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.

Re: Windy.com

#98

Post by yutyut »

I use Windy fairly regularly for military flight planning. Nice tool to get an idea of when to launch to hit a timeline/TOT.

Re: Windy.com

#99

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

mmaunder wrote: post #29

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 want to know what the weather is at a given location, find a nearby airport, get their ATIS (or AWOS or ASOS) phone number and you can call and get a real-time report that is extremely accurate."

To get the phone number:

     curl -Ls https://www.airnav.com/airports/get?s="$1"|sed -n '/.*WX/{s/.*=right>//;s/ .*top>//;s/
For example, Orcas Island

     curl -Ls https://www.airnav.com/airports/get?s=orcas|sed -n '/.*WX/{s/.*=right>//;s/ .*top>//;s/
or, without the redirect

     curl -s https://www.airnav.com/airports/KORS|sed -n '///;s/ .*top>//;s/

Re: Windy.com

#100

Post by hugoromano »

sealaska wrote: post #88
hugoromano wrote: post #79

I was paying for it, but didn't renew the subscription, this year in 90 days that I needed forecast was way off in 42 of them, and trying all their different model offers. Maybe next year I will resubscribe, depending how their models forecast over Fall and Winter.

Are you using a different weather app or website that is more accurate? My understanding is that windy primarily just shows data from different forecast models, so isn't your issue really with the third-party models, not with Windy's weather client?

My grandfather was a meteorologist (taught me forecast based observation and weather station data), and I am also a first officer half of the year (as well have education in modelling for navigation). This year was rough with modelling. I use Windy to validate my forecast and navigation decisions at sea. As we sail, anemometer readings are crosscheck with the forecast from windy and mine, and windy didn't go well. Sometimes paper and pencil do a great job. I started using Windy (windyty.com) in 2016, and until 2020 forecast was quite good, my takeaway is that maybe Climate Change could make the job of weather forecasting much harder.
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