Suggestion - Additional Alert Conditions on Mobile App
-
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening,
I am a photographer in misty gray Washington where mountain clouds can quickly change and shift but I’m also quite busy and can forget to check forecasts for the right time and opportunity ahead of time, so I’m hoping to get alerts beyond just the ‘cloudy skies, mostly sunny, etc’ indicators since cloud conditions can still vary. My goal is to just get notified on conditions when there isn’t a cloud base present that will obscure my view. Since winter is coming up too, clear skies will be less frequent.
I’m not super experienced with forecasts and maybe there is a reason this won’t work or the prediction is too complicated, frequent, or variable, but if this is something that could seriously help me out then I’d love to see it added. For now I just need to remind myself to check the conditions on all the local peaks, which in and of itself can become time consuming.
Thanks! I love the app so far!
V/r,
Taylor A. Port
-
@Taylor-Ashton
May be in the future your demand for a ‘cloud base alert’ could be set, but in meantime you could check from time to time the Meteogram for your location which gives the cloudiness forecast for the next days and according different weather models. For instance from next Tuesday it seems you will a sunny weather for the following days.
-
Yep, that’s what I’ve been doing at the moment, I meant Washington as in the state however.
Essentially, our Mountain Conditions change very dramatically from place to place and very quickly from time to time, I was planning on setting up a separate folder on my email to filter through alerts while having it set up on a ton of different locations all throughout the state and and being able to see which ones should have ideal weather, specifically cloud coverage, at what times. Then I could better plan what trails would be best to knock out on what days.
Manually checking every peak I would like to photograph can become quite burdensome when we’ve got hundreds of them scattered out in their own little microclimates. For now I plan on just setting up my alerts for sunny conditions. And on top of the additional conditions we could use, an alert manager would be a great feature for mobile, not sure if it’s on desktop but I’d definitely pay for something like that (well I am already premium)
V/r,
Taylor A. Port
V/r,
Taylor Ashton P.
-
@Taylor-Ashton
For photography, light is key, especially the type of light. Doing myself a lot of photographs, I know exactly the problem. Now, forecasting the type of light you would get in the mountains is not easy at all. As you said and you already observed, light can change very rapidly in the mountains. This is not a question to know if the weather will be good or not. A full sunny day can be more boring from a photography point of view than a sky with clouds. A foggy morning can be more gorgeous and attractive than a blue sky !
Beside the good idea suggested by @idefix37 to use the meteogram (with different models and at different locations around the place you wish to go), there is a tool called sounding which can be extremely useful and available with Windy. I know this tool can look a bit complicated at a first look but if you spend sometime to understand it and more important you learn what you can get as information for the next hours from this tool (examples : fog or not, clouds, type of clouds, levels,....), I think that this tool could help you a lot as well. If you do a quick search on internet, you will find nice and easy articles explaining the tool, how to use it and what you can get as info. Once done, I am sure you will use it often !
With Windy, there is a basic sounding available with the picker location, when you open it, you will see sounding in the list. On top, in the list of the available plugins, there are 2 great plugins, SkewT and Better Sounding. Do not hesitate to intall and use them. Good luck ! -
@Taylor-Ashton
Sorry I should have realized there is no mountain in Washington DC :-)
In addition to the explanation from @Yves70, sounding is available with right click on mouse on desktop and a long press on mobile app screen.
