Windy.com introduces soaring forecast
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Useful addition for glider pilots to summarise the ifo from other layers, airgram and meteogram. Thermal strength is important, as is cloudbase, perhaps these could be combined on one layer with colours for strength and contours for cloudbase?
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Good day
I have been using Windy for couple of years in sailing.
One of my main routes for sailing is Bass Strait, between Melbourne/Queenscliff and Tasmania, well known as the toughest passage. For those people who does not know much about it, the race Sydney to Hobart is passing just there.
As many sailors, ordinary people are quite often there, sailing, I have an idea of collecting data from these people as the most accurate collection of position, wind speed, direction and temperature. As communication have improved over the last decade, now is much easier to participate. Collection from the local stations, - from local islands will as well be a good source to accomplish the real picture of the weather.
Main reason for this idea is one of my last trip from Stanley, Tasmania to Melbourne. Windy prediction was 26kn, actually it has been most of the trip over 36kn. It was tough cruise.Regards from Melbourne
Boba -
@bobailik Hi, real-time data can be shared via weather station, you can register it here stations.windy.com.
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@bobailik
Hi,
Windy already shows local weather stations around this strait.
Just click Reported wind to get them in addition to the wind layer.
Most of them are personal weather station (pws or madis). Some are professional.
But if you mean transmitting wind data from a sailing boat at sea, that seems difficult as Windy reports only fixed pws.
And in any case it is only observed wind, not forecast, of course.
Fair winds and safe sailing to you ! -
@idefix37 it could be a good improvement way to use the 2.5km to add the altitude levels much more accurate for flying, I'm not sure that the 1.3km gives any benefits except that it's a little quickly available.
The souding option will be great in that case. -
Hello,
It is very nice to see that you trying to do something for soaring forecast.
In the airgram when checking soaring thermals, could be good to see only one day analysis not one week, then you can check it better that one day what you need.
Also there is need to see not only clouds base, wind temperature and etc. but also thermal strength forecast during day in different locations.
You can look to Skysight point forecast and can do something similar.
Thank you -
@v7
One day analysis would not change anything as basically the the time stamp is by 3 hour steps.
If you want more detailed and hourly forecast you need to get the Premium subscription.
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thank you for the new program, my grand daughter is learning to fly hellos , and she is always look at my windy ap. to see what the weather and winds are going to be like
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@sgtmaloney Happy to hear it!
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Awsome addition to WINDY - I HOPE IT IS ADDED TO THE FULL VERSION SOON! The Soaring Forcast will be my default when I open Windy on a webpage and my apps.
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Hi,
Great new feature, thanks for this ! 😀
I am mainly using the Android app.
Paraglider pilot, occasionnaly XC flying in flatlands.
Also using Topmeteo and meteoparapente
I have just browsed quickly all comments, sorry in case of double request:- I would be interested in the possibility of having a 2nd display (ex: isolines) with the condensation level, which is the actual maximum height we can reach in VFR
- I know I can get the info by pointing somewhere, get the sounding forecast and then CCL, but continuously swapping between display is not user-friendly when you compare areas and different routes
- apart from this I am also interested in a second indicator like shear ratio (buoyancy vs wind) to estimate if the thermals will get washed out or not
Thanks for your efforts 👍
Best regards
Stéphane
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Thank you for adding this feature, I love it.
I am wondering what the difference is between this forecast and the NOAA forecast is. It would be great to make it easy to see what the definition of your number is.
For example today in Hemet California the NOAA forecast is 11,010 for the max... and in yours it is 14,300 ft.
Lake Elsinore California is closer with 7800ft vs 8450 ft
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sgx/data/aviation/soar.htm
Is this a definition issue or a calculation / data difference ?possible Improvements and additions:
- A slight addition would be to add an adjustment for "critical updraft strength" given a selectable sink rate for a glider. For example a glider minimum sink rate of 225fpm.
- Thermal updraft velocity would be nice as well.
- Finer resolution where possible
Here is a site that shows these:
http://www.soaringpredictor.info/rasptable/RASPtable.html
Note that the actual height in this site might be under reported. I have some personal experience that this may be the case. -
As a glider pilot myself, the thermals layer is a feature that will expand the platform and bring in a new audience of users. The thermals layer is epic. I think what would complete this addition is to find a way to incorporate ridge lift and wave lift layers along with the thermals layer, as well as incorporate past history/historical data of the thermals, etc.
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Looks good. Can't wait to get some lift here and check it. Thanks
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Good idea, there are lots of parameters about gliding weather forecast for example thermal speed,buoyancy ratio and so on it would be fine to show that
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Excellent addition to the menu. Keep up the good work!
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with my hobby - hot air ballooning - it's the other way around as for the *glider folk:
mornings: we do not wait with flying until the thermals set in, we better land when they do
evenings: good to know when the thermals subside - between then and darkness we can go for a flight and sometimes it becomes too short
super useful - as is the regional indication of thermal activity
thanks @filip_k !
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Thank you for making this extremely useful layer for Windy! My main request would be to use a wider variety of colors for the lift height. It can be important to know the predicted difference of 500 meters in one area compared to another. With the current colors of red and orange it's hard to tell exactly what altitude is being forecasted.
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@byfootandbysky
You can change the color of this layer yourself and choose a variety of colors as you like.
In website or in the tablet app, go to Settings > Customize the color scale.
When the modification is done it is applied to your phone app too:
See how to modify colors:
https://community.windy.com/topic/10336/customize-the-color-scales-of-windy-layers?_=1626072094846 -
I'm very happy to see the addition of the Themals-layer. The lightning symbols for thunder storms could in my opinion be visually more prominent (alarming). Information about the spatial extent of thunder storms is critical for flight planning.
