Windy.com introduces soaring forecast
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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:
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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.
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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. -
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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.
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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 -
Thermal detail for was roughly accurate for both location and time as observed during today's flight.
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Dear sirs, great job.
Is there any option to see the thermal strength in feet per minute at the selected altitude?
Best regards. -
@kaktus-1 Hello, you can change the unit to feet in the legend in the bottom right corner. The forecast is available in 3hours steps for non-Premium users and 1hr steps for Premium.
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Yeah, it's great!
I'm pilot too, flying of 42 years yet on the hangglider. This plugin gladly welcome.
Maybe, I 'll be buing The Premium licence of Windy too.
Thanks,
Best Regards,
Sla Piar -
Excellent addition! Thanks!
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@korina
waiting for thermals/ soaring to be finished.😀
I have a question and proposal for enhancing the the thermal layer GUI/ view according to many comments.
Q1: thermal Hight = usable hight? - is cloudbase defined as usable hight when clouds is formed by the thermals?Proposal:
P2: have "elevation curves" for usable thermal hight (incl
cloudbase )
P3: the colour indicate average climbrate..
(as completely they can be calculated on known data )
P4: keep cloud symbols.
P5: wind Particles animation (no colour) "under" point P2 -P5above.with these in same view, I believe this will be a great overview where the flying conditions is the best..
(use to decide where to go and get a good general overview in a little wider area.
Also possible to see general routes for long distances.
for more details, most users probably look at different parameters /layers to make up their mind how flying will be
/brgds
sverker.forslin@gmail.com -
great feature!!! I am using for planning my flights here in brazil
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@Korina HI Corina.
As a Glider and Hang Glider pilot I like the idea. So far though not proving too useful. Cloud base is not that useful on it's own , the speed of convection (m/s vertical) is more important as when this drops to less than the glider sink rate you stop going up! Have a look at how RASP (https://rasp.stratus.org.uk/index.php/rasptable-desktop) works, in particular the "Star Rating" and the "Thermaling height" .Nice to see this type of feature arriving on Windy!
Thanks
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Excellent, une précision très satisfaisante
Je suis sur Planeur sur LFNF ( Vinon sur Verdon )
bon Vélivole -
Thanks for more layers added for Thermals. I am more and more convinced to use this feature. But the range (altitude) of lifts is not all we (gliders pilots) are looking for. Most important is the average themal strength (the vertical speed which we sse on variometers while climbing). Is it something conected to the buoyancy of the air particle? Can you consider to add such thing? Best regards. Mariusz Poźniak
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The granularity of thermal height is not fine enough.
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I like it very much. Done in such a way that a huge amount of information is shown at a glance. Since it is new and I have only just started using it, accuracy is in question.
OBTW, I asked and they provided! NOAA is now creating a soaring forecast for Baker City Oregon! WOOT! Perhaps you can integrate some of their information?
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@Keshka-Kotera We will consider it, thank you.
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Not only for pilot it will be useful but also for sailors, I would say that 90% of inshore regattas are governed by this meteo event.
On lake of lecco/como, we have 2 wind, Tivano, from North from around 05-06:00L till 10:00L and later the Breva from south from 12-13:00 till 16-17:00 (maybe you are more familiar with those on Lago di Garda, l'Ora and Peler).
We are using also the graphic of the Swiss Pressure Gradient of the Foehn to have a trend indication.
As I'm an ex pilot with aeronautical Technical’s degree at high shcool and a decade at airspace engineers, it's sad to see sailors don't assimilate the concept of Thermal (in theory with a barometer it's possible to make some forecast of the field). -
@alex-panzeri said in Windy.com introduces soaring forecast:
it's sad to see sailors don't assimilate the concept of Thermal
I don't entirely agree with you. At sea, when we look at the coastline lined with cumulus clouds to confirm the sea breeze conditions, we say that 'the thermal is developing', that is to say that the breeze will soon establish itself in the afternoon. Even if the knowledge of sailors on the thermal is not so thorough, they know at sea the reasons for the coastal breezes.
For those who sail on lakes in mountainous regions, the thermal is a very good indicator of the coming mountain breezes on these lakes. But it is still necessary to know very well the local winds direction, or to use high resolution models such as AROME or ICON-D2 on Windy on wider lakes. -
I ivo referenced this topic on
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It works pretty well in South America, thanks for adding this feature
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nice addition t windy, would be nice to see calculate speed of lifting
