Features for synoptic meteorology
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I don't know if synoptic meteorology is your focus, but if you also want to address this, I have some suggestions. With your zoomable maps you already have a code base that is almost nowhere to be found.
Isolines:
- The most important information on classic maps or weather sites. If the thickness and the colour (white/black) is adjustable, they would be more visible and more useful.
- At the moment the distance between the lines ist arbitrary. A distance of 40m (geopotential height) with values divisible by 40 is common.
- More effort, but extremely useful: Decouple the isolines from the selected height of the map. For example, the 850hPa temperature and the 500hPa geopotential can be displayed. This feature is not available anywhere else, because the maps are mostly server rendered. So you would be the only ones.
Charts:
- The data of the selected map (e.g. 850hPa temperature) should also be viewable as a diagram using the location picker.
Colors:
- Make it possible to disable color gradients between each value. The map may not look as nice, but temperature gradients for example will be more visible.
Kind regards
Michael, Austria
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@gfs
Synoptic meteorology is probably not the main focus of Windy which is more outdoor activities oriented.
Anyway, your suggestions would be useful, especially the isolines thickness, but the other ones too.Concerning the last one (uniform color without smoothing between rounded values, if I understand), it is already possible to get it. You can customize the color scale in this way. You just need to add additional steps in the code.
Here is an example where I have modified the code to get this type of scale for wind:
https://community.windy.com/topic/7233/wind-colors-for-sailors-and-for-everyone?_=1597045720730Same for waves height more than 1.9m:
https://community.windy.com/topic/10149/waves-colours/4?_=1597048774689Additional information about color customization:
https://community.windy.com/topic/10336/customize-the-color-scales-of-windy-layers?_=1597049072128If something is not clear for you, just let me know.
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@gfs
@idefix37
It is correct that Windy is oriented for outdoor activities. For my outdoor activities, I need a good weather forecast and this is also the purpose of Windy : providing weather forecast.Providing data and weather forecast, as proposed by Windy, is often not enough to understand what it happens and why. Synoptic meteorology is a great help to understand the what and the why.
Now, why Windy could/should include synoptic info as well despite the fact that they are outdoor activities oriented ? Well because it happens often that the different models give different weather forecast. If you understand the synoptic situation, you can better understand the differences between the data given by the models and then assess yourself the probability associated to each model. In summary, knowing better the synoptic situation will help you to trust maybe one model (and weather forecast) more than the others and finally you will get a more accurate weather forecast which is key for many outdoor activities. Outdoor activities and weather forecast are linked to each other, weather forecast and synoptic situation are linked to each other
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Thanks for your additions. I think that some basic synoptic features are useful for a wide group of windy customers. Maps with very special parameters for people with a deep understanding of meteorology and thermodynamics would be a waste of (development) time.
In my opinion, the possibility to combine maps from different pressure levels allows to evaluate the weather situation on a synoptic scale and is a good balance between costs and benefits.
The following example combines precipitation with 500hPa geopotential (made with Photoshop) and shows what I mean. Now we can see the cause of the predicted surface weather in the upper air:
