How to configure Windy web and iOS to display wind at various altitudes instead of pressure?
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@pr3d4t0r
Hi,
You need to know that weather models provide wind speed and other forecast parameters at certain pressure levels. Therefore, they do not provide them at a specific altitude.
However, Windy displays the “average altitude” of the pressure levels you set with the Altitude slider.
Do you need wind speed based on altitude at a given location or on a map?
Why do you need wind speed at specific altitudes? -
@idefix37 - Hi!
Thanks for your reply. I need the wind speed at specific altitudes over various airports throughout the world. Average altitude wind speed and direction would be fantastic. My points of interest are wind speeds from 13k down to 5.5k. Windy used to display those fine, the option disappeared during an update about a year ago.
Reason for wind speed at specific altitudes: I practice a discipline called speed skydiving. We exit the aircraft and head down at an angle of between 50º and 88º with respect to the ground. Knowing the wind speed at, say, 13k, 10k, 8k, 5.5k is helpful during training and in competition because it's an indicator of how we might need to modify our body position to be more aerodynamic, account for drift, and so on. Performance depends on wind density, air density, temperature, etc. in addition to body position and elevation AGL vs MSL.
During a speed run, if there is more than one speed skydiver on exit, each leaves the aircraft and turns right or left with respect to jump run/line of flight, with 5 to 8 seconds separation between jumpers. Strong uppers may affect exit strategy, glide angle, etc. to help us keep ourselves and others safe from potential collisions.
Are there specific models we can load into Windy for restoring the old wind-speed-at-given-altitude feature? Where can I find them? Thanks in advance and cheers!
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@pr3d4t0r
Thank you for explanation.
Above a location I think the best is to use the Sounding forecast.
You can choose various altitudes (more exactly elevations) to get the wind speed and direction at this level.
In the browser version right click on mouse at a given location a pop up window allows to open the Sounding.
In the mobile app, when selecting a location, Sounding is at right end of the grey top banner.Is it the feature that you were looking for ?
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@idefix37 - Thanks! This looks helpful. I'll check it out this evening, training right now.
The feature I wanted is when we set the animation altitude and shows the animation, elevation, and pressure; it used to show the wind speed. I will have better feedback after we're done jumping and I can look at this.
Have an awesome day!
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@pr3d4t0r said in How to configure Windy web and iOS to display wind at various altitudes instead of pressure?:
The feature I wanted is when we set the animation altitude and shows the animation, elevation, and pressure; it used to show the wind speed. I will have better feedback after we're done jumping and I can look at this.
Sorry I don’t know what is the feature that you are describing. You may be confusing it with another app ? or I don't remember it.
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post/210192):
Sorry I don’t know what is the feature that you are describing. You may be confusing it with another app ? or I don't remember it.
No, that's how Windy was displaying the winds at altitude back in 2019, when I first installed it, until around last year at some point. I noticed that they reshuffled the right-side drawer UI, other changes, and now I have to try to figure out how to find the same data as before.
Another (unrelated) peeve: if I search for any of my DZs on iOS Windy displays the forecast for that airport, but doesn't highlight the location on the map. Same action, on the computer, shows a "beeping" dot at the airport location, so that I can at do a manual zoom on that area.
There were some UI changes around a year ago that made the app/website a lot less... pleasant to use.
@idefix37 said in [How to configure Windy web and iOS to display wind at various altitudes instead of pressure?](/
About the Sounding forecast - not quite, and I can't figure out how to display it anyway. Since configuring the Altitude button/slider to show the wind speed is not available, here's what I need: an XY plane where X has the altitude AGL (OKi MSL, my software can adjust if needed), and the Y shows the wind speed. If that doesn't exist, a table would be fine. 1k or 2k intervals is fine (I fly 1,000 ft head down in about 2 seconds). What would be your recommendation to get this data?
I will look at the Windy API later to see if I can get those data programmatically by lat,lon. I don't care to view it on Windy, the data will be used by our scoring system.
Thanks again and cheers!
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@idefix37 said in How to configure Windy web and iOS to display wind at various altitudes instead of pressure?:
Sorry I don’t know what is the feature that you are describing. You may be confusing it with another app ? or I don't remember it.
Hej! Figured out how to get the wind speeds. It's not exactly what I needed, but it'll do for now. Steps to generate:
Set the location (airport, drop zone, whatever)
Select Wind from the right-side menu
Click on the map on the point where you want the measurements; it sets a white dot
Right-click the white dot, select Forecast for this location
Use the Altitude control on the right
Get the wind speed reports
Joy!The elevations are coarse, but they'll do for my purposes. I can get wind speed, from where (in sexagesimal earth degrees), and elevation at 4,200, 3,000, and 1,500 meters. My speed runs are from ~4k to 1.65k, so this will do the job until I find a better API provider.
Thanks for your help - cheers!
pr3d4t0r
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Yes, you just need to click on the wind map at a location and change the elevation (more exactly the pression level) with the Altitude slider to read the wind speed and direction at that level in the weather picker. This is the basic way to get the wind forecast locally in free atmosphere at a pressure level. So simple !
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@idefix37 - I used it today, it was fine for a day to do it manually but I think I'll find an API to get these data. Plus I'll have to enter it into the computer later anyway to see how different wind speeds and angles against my flight path affect performance.
Thanks again for your help, have a great week!
pr3d
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@pr3d4t0r
I’m not a aviation expert, but to reduce the uncertainty of the flight altitude you could define it in pressure level rather than actual altitude ? -
@idefix37 said in How to configure Windy web and iOS to display wind at various altitudes instead of pressure?:
I’m not a aviation expert, but to reduce the uncertainty of the flight altitude you could define it in pressure level rather than actual altitude ?
Howdy - busy week! I need the elevation AGL for now, to see how it affects my performance during a jump. It takes me less than 24 seconds to go from 13,000 to around 5,500 ft.
It looks like I'll ditch Windy.com for that and use this instead - https://markschulze.net/winds/ - it does what I need and shows the wind speed and the wind heading. I will reach out to Mark to see if the site offers an API that I can query with different times of the day (I jump about once every 40 minutes during training, and once every 1-2 hours in competition).
Thanks again and cheers!
