Does Windy ignore fog or display inaccurate data?

bmaik

Hi to all,

I'm a general aviation pilot and I would like to rely on Windy data during my flights. However, after initial enthusism about the broad variety of weather parameters that windy indicates and predicts I am disappointed that the data is surprisingly inaccurate at times. For example, right now the weather here in Zurich is foggy, the Metar of Zurich airport nearby reads:

LSZH 122120Z 29004KT 0450 R14/1000U R16/0800U R28/0750D R34/0350N FG VV002 05/05 Q1022 BECMG 0200 VV001

which clearly proves that there's fog all around and runway visibility is reduced to 750 m for certain runways which is confirmed by a look out of the window, I hardly see the buildings on the other side of the street! However, the cloud base in Zurich displayed in Windy is "unlimited" showing no clouds at all and all models indicate a ridiculous visibility of 47.6 km at present time! How come?

Gkikas LGPZ

@bmaik

The actual (observed) weather, displayed in Windy,
is the same with METARs provided by airport's meteo. stations.

0_1542090459345_b485c18f-ce28-40db-9f0a-83dc5a357208-εικόνα.png

I think your objection is about the inaccuracy of the forecast model.
Windy is not producing numerical weather predictions,
just visualizes forecast products from models.

Yes, wx. models sometimes show inaccuracies,
especially for weather parameters near the surface (visibility, cloud bases, wind gusts).
Fog is a difficult to forecast weather phenomenon, because there are too many parameters
involving in the forecast procedure.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/clouds/fog/how-do-you-forecast-fog

The problem will be reduced when the air-surface interaction can be described expicitly,
as the model's resolution gets higher.

@bmaik "Does Windy ignore fog or display inaccurate data?"

There's no 'data' involved. It's very easy to get lulled into thinking its displaying data. It's just trend mapping. As such it's possibly the best thing to happen to GA for gross situation-awareness and finding flight windows in planning. I wish it had a turbulence overlay plus pressure with altitude display though.