Rain map not useful
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Am I the only one to find rain maps completely unuseful? They're too general and give a too early slight chance of rain whenever there is some actual rain usually only arriving much later.
I can never use the rain map forecasts for anything practical. In that regard the meteogram showing rain (mm or inches) profiles along the day provide a much better picture.
I feel the rain maps could be more useful if they provided an actual sense of the direction from which the forecasted rain would be arriving and better timing.
The map rains kind of try to do so, but like I said, they're too general, in the sense that after some determined hour, rain just shows over a large patch of terrain, so we don't get the sense from actual arrival direction, which could be useful for small plane pilots for instance.
In areas I am familiar with, I know from personal experience where the rain will be arriving from a lot more accurately than the Windy rain patches blooming all over the map, so I guess that kind of knowledge could be incorporated into the system, even though I realize it's not easy, because sometimes these patterns are very particular to a region.
I can get better information by combining the meteogram rain forecasts, the winds aloft and, when the rain is actually getting closer, the weather radar information.
I love Windy so this is not a complaint, but a contribution from my personal use of the app and web site.
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@Fabiano
There are many people who rely on rain maps from global models as ECMWF, GFS or ICON.
The rain prediction of these global models that Windy shows over the Brazilian regions may be considered imprecise for you. This is due to the medium resolution (9 to 22km) of the global models and to the rain forecast which is the precipitation accumulation in the last 3 hours.
https://community.windy.com/topic/3361/description-of-weather-overlaysYou better rely on Radar and Satellite layers if you want to have a good estimate of the rain arrival time and direction. One hour before the rain it is easy to predict it with the weather radar layer:
Use also the Satellite layer specially the infra+ in case of thunderstorms.
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@idefix37 Thank you for your input, and sorry for taking so long to reply.
Yes I understand what you're saying, and that's exactly what I do on my own account: mixing the various pieces of information and adding them together in order to come up with my own estimate of rain intensity and origin.
I wasn't aware that our Brazilian GFS, ECWMF and ICON data was less precise. This may explain the rain map information being so "spread out".
For instance, by the image below we should at this moment, have rain all around, but today no sign of rain where I stand on the Rio de Janeiro shore.
I know there are patches of storms travelling through - as I can see on the radar - and I know that where the wind is coming from there should actually be a little rain later in the day.
But if I were to judge by the rain map at this point, I should be wearing a full rain coat and umbrella just for going for a snack in the corner, instead we now see just fair weather, on a warm summer day.
Maybe someday we'll have better models for my region. Next time I am in Europe I am going to compare the efficiency of the rain maps over there!
Thanks my friend, happy sailing!
