Windy.com introduces soaring forecast

Aberhangie

Love the idea but (I fly Gliders and Hang Gliders) but the implementation is not great. It looks more like a plot of cloud cover and not clear what the numbers mean. There are 3 things which would be useful on this plot

Height of convection (Ft ASL/AGL)
best expected strength of convection (Ft/min)
Shear/Buoyancy ratio

That would be useful. If you want to see what good looks like have a look at the RASP forecast website.

Nice site overall through, I use it all the time for general forecasts and love the Site Alerts.

Thanks

ΛΑΑΣΑΡΕΩΣ

HI THERE! I'M PARAGLIDING IN GREECE AND THE "THERMAL" INDICATOR IS VERY IMPORTANT.... I'LL TRY IT AND THEN LET YOU KNOW THE RESULTS...

THANK YOU FOR YOUR EFFORTS

SL

ERROSO!

Audrey j

Bonjour, la fonction Arôme a été supprimé, hors j'ai pris l'abonnement prenium exprès pour celle-ci, habitant en France, c'est la plus précise. Comptez-vous la remettre svp ??

idefix37

@audrey-j
La diffusion des prévisions par AROME est interrompue pour mise a jour des formats de fichiers par Météo France:

https://mf-models-on-aws.org/#arome-france-hd/v2/

Ce modèle devrait être à nouveau disponible sur Windy début février.

Ian Pauwels

Good idea. Go further than that. Must see.

Gerhardkoller

Ich finde Windy.com voll super Dankeschön für diese Arbeit!!!

bobport47

Really love the new THERMAL setting - thanks ...PS: I'm both a Paraglider pilot and a Sailplane pilot!

Sobriquet 0

Where do we see the legend for colors ?

idefix37

@sobriquet-0

See top of this thread
https://community.windy.com/topic/16458/windy-com-introduces-soaring-forecast

Billy Stein

Great Feature I am a Glider and Paraglider Pilot and this is great. I think precision will improve with the time

beachcoins

Thermals is good. Do you a Front (cold warm stationary) layer?

Korina

@beachcoins Hello, please read more about fronts here.

falconron

@korina fantastic, I'm a paraglider pilot. I'll advertise on the glider sites for you.

Mariusz Pozniak

Hello Windy team, thank you for thermal forecasting, which seems to be very useful. The only single request from polish pilots: please change the missed translation connected to the icon of the glider: replace "ocieplenie" by "TERMIKA". Best regards Mariusz fro Aeroclub of Leszno, Poland

nesro

@mariusz-pozniak thanks for suggestion. it will be fixed with the next update

Air Vision

Fantastic.

Antony Maitland

I have only just come across the soaring forecast: useful as it goes out quite a long time. For the UK, it would be better to have more differentation in the convective depth: on the great majority of good thermal days, the depth is rarely more than 10000 ft.

An indication of thermal strength would also be a good addition.

Tony Maitland

jupaketto

Thanks for the additional layer. I have just evaluated the predicition over the last few thermal flying days. It is always important to note that thermal predicitions are also a bit regionally influenced, so my assessment is mainly valid for the thermally weaker area in NW Germany.

What I notice is:

The thermal height predicition is usually overoptimistic. Often 200m below is about right. And I am already talking about the best height achieved by the best pilot of the day.
The thermal max. height is an important parameter, but the thermal avg. strength would actually be much more useful and better to compare.
a) To begin with, the thermal height can be easily derived from the temp, which an advanced user will anyway look at. Thermal strength is less easy to derive without actual calculations and it is not so that high base = strong day.
b) Over mountainous terrain always the highest peak have the best thermal max. height. They do not always have the strongest thermals though, usually the better ones, but not always the strongest. Thus the prediciton becomes a terrain map there rather than a thermal forecast there.

Speculation:
Hard to say why the forecast is nearly always overoptimistic in my region. One reason might be that ground dryness plays in reality a role in how good the ground warms up and that is perhaps not used in the calculations.
Also anything a bit closer to the see gets see wind effects, though not in all wind situations and I find the predictions also over-optimistic in south wind situations.

dtaber666

I am a new user of Windy and was just looking at the soaring forecast. It seems like you are computing top of usable lift. I think it would also be useful to compute thermal updraft velocity and let the user toggle between them. And it would be nice to have access to the wind elevation slider when the soaring forecast is displayed so you can easily see the wind at different altitudes. This is looking very good overall, though. Thanks.

sierra03

Bonjour,
I am also a new user and have a similar question.
What is the "thermal altitude" ?
The top of the boundary layer ?
Or the maximum usable altitude ?
Thanks for the great job