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    Visibility layer is not accurate

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    • A
      Ahmed A.AS last edited by

      The sand is everywhere as the airport weather station is reporting but the visibility layer have another opinion.Opera Snapshot_2020-04-24_144420_www.windy.com.png

      AAA

      Gkikas LGPZ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • vsinceac
        vsinceac last edited by vsinceac

        Yep, Horizontal Visibility is known as one of the less reliable parameters in forecast models and one of the most difficult to compute. E.g. in GFS model, this parameter was recently added, it did not existed a couple of years ago.
        Thus, at least for Airports, you should trust rather observations or local forecast, instead global models...

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        • vsinceac
          vsinceac last edited by

          This post is deleted!
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          • Gkikas LGPZ
            Gkikas LGPZ Moderator @Ahmed A.AS last edited by

            @Ahmed-A-AS
            And now (24 Apr./20Z) the observation is 10+ km (CAVOK)
            and the TAF forecasts temporary visibility 500m in SandStorm.
            a469a4ce-933d-4010-beda-60121fe6edc0-εικόνα.png

            Visibility in models is computed taking (mainly) humidity into account.
            Is not a good indicator for dry situations (haze, sandstorm).
            For forecasting visibility in such situations
            I preffer aerosol layer
            https://community.windy.com/topic/11380/canary-islands-hit-by-massive-african-dust-storm/2?_=1587759958205

            Gkikas LGPZ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • Gkikas LGPZ
              Gkikas LGPZ Moderator @Gkikas LGPZ last edited by

              ... also https://forecast.uoa.gr/en/forecast-maps/dust/europe

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              • vsinceac
                vsinceac last edited by vsinceac

                This discussion (as well as many other community discussions, e.g. this one), makes me thinking that adding a collection of 3rd party, pertinent URLs to Windy UI would be really helpful to many users (and to Windy, too).

                Of course such a 3rd party web sites are not intended to replace, nor to compete with Windy.com.
                A good sample is the link provided in comment just above, which is for a web site specialized in dust forecast, provided by a research laboratory.
                Windy.com has not the required resources to (and should not) compete with big research laboratories (e.g. official WMO product providers), but could advantageously provide such a pertinent list to its users; I guess everybody would win...

                Such a pertinent URLs list may be pretty long, thus items may be grouped by category (e.g. "Weather Alerts", "LRF Models", "NWP Models Data Providers", "Local Forecasts Europe/NA/Asia/country/Etc)", "Satellite Imagery", etc.).
                Its appearance may be also as discrete as needed (e.g. placed in the main Menu, just after Windy Plugins), in order to not change current look and feel of Windy UI.
                Of course each URL link could and should have a full description (e.g. as OnMouseOver tooltip).

                Btw., such a link to OSM Community web site could save a lot of time to both users and administrators and avoid all these long and boring posts about missing roads or wrong country names on Windy maps...

                Moreover, as Windy has many occasional or permanent users and part of them are meteorologists, forecasters, pilots, I guess many of them would be happy to propose and share pertinent URLs which would be really helpful to users with less knowledge in these domains.
                Btw., the community discussions already contain a pretty big collection of links to pertinent 3rd party web sites...

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • jmh2002
                  jmh2002 Moderator Mariners - Seafarers Sailor last edited by

                  I can see some use with this idea, but I also see that Windy is trying to source this data via APIs, and provide it via Layers, all together inside one beautiful interface.

                  So I'm not sure. In some ways linking to third party sites somewhat defeats the purpose of Windy.

                  Maybe these sites can be encouraged to partner with Windy instead, if the information is truly an addition to what Windy already provides?

                  WINDY is everywhere :)

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • vsinceac
                    vsinceac last edited by vsinceac

                    @jmh2002 said in Visibility layer is not accurate:
                    > Maybe these sites can be encouraged to partner with Windy instead, if the information is truly an addition to what Windy already provides?

                    I'm curious how web sites like NOAA, ECMWF, BOM Australia, Meteo France, etc. could be encouraged to partner with Windy...
                    Many Windy discussions in this community link to 3rd party web sites, which are not competitors to Windy, and I don't think they defeats the purpose of windy; they rather emphasize it...

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • jmh2002
                      jmh2002 Moderator Mariners - Seafarers Sailor last edited by

                      ECMWF already partners with Windy... ;)

                      WINDY is everywhere :)

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                      • vsinceac
                        vsinceac last edited by vsinceac

                        Sure, but Windy users don't have full knowledge about all useful info ECMWF provides on its different web sites...
                        The proposal was just about sharing useful info with Windy users; I don't think such a knowledge sharing could be a bad point for Windy; it seems it already happens via Windy community discussions, with best results for both Windy.com and its users...

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • jmh2002
                          jmh2002 Moderator Mariners - Seafarers Sailor last edited by jmh2002

                          As I mentioned before, I'm not totally against this proposal, I can see some use cases and some benefits, I'm only suggesting some mitigating circumstances.

                          I would also mention that in many cases the additional data available from various sites may be for the more expert user, and/or may not even be in a particularly user friendly format.

                          Let's remember that part of Windy's aim is to visualise existing data that is already available through APIs but that is perhaps not accessible, or user friendly, or able to be displayed or interpreted for the general public.

                          Even with this general aim, some Windy visualisations or tools are still very much at the expert level and beyond the ability or need of the general user.

                          But I'm still not totally opposed to some type of further expert information being made available - if it is really decided to be necessary - and I think that may be an important point.

                          Finally, I don't make development decisions, so we are only discussing ideas here.

                          :)

                          WINDY is everywhere :)

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • jmh2002
                            jmh2002 Moderator Mariners - Seafarers Sailor last edited by Korina

                            Update on this subject from another post here:

                            @Korina said in Feature request: Link to forecast discussion:

                            ...we occasionally publish a third party articles about severe or extreme weather. However, Windy already offers expert level forecast, we feel no need to implement other links in bigger volume.

                            WINDY is everywhere :)

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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