Forecast storm/rain path?

caramadra

Just discovered Windy.com on a website where others were bemoaning (along with me) the recent loss of Intellicast.com. I'll not use WUnderground. LOVE the Windy.com graphics.

One thing I miss -- and maybe it's there, but I'm not finding it -- is the ability to turn on the forecasted path of a storm. Sometimes the direction radar appears to take is deceptive sometimes, but those paths help to know if something's heading my way.

Thanks

The 10-day 'wind accumulation' and 10-day 'rain accumulation' overlays will usually give you the problem areas for a storm’s forecast path, and its changes as they take place.

10-day wind accumulation

10-day rain accumulation

And if you want a more precise forecast location path you can simply enable the particles display on the wind gusts overlay and use the right mouse button to get up the distance and planning menu option to plot the path precisely.

Plot the center of rotation of the particles as you jump it forwards each 24 hour period with the time bar (at the bottom of the screen) through the forecast period, and you’ll get something like this:

You can also zoom in then out to place these plot points very precisely as I have done here (they can also be dragged and dropped or deleted and redone if you get it wrong).

It's fiddly at first but once you've done it a few times you can get very precise plots and timings and a good idea of the wind and rainfall intensities and timing. You can then view the resulting plot with the various overlays enabled to get a very good sense of the development and movement over time.

The "1" point below represents NOW, while the "2" point represents 24 hours later, ... etc.

Cloud

Wind

Rain

The 12 hr ECMWF model is the basis of most cyclonic storm tracks these days and it's remarkably accurate over a two to three day period (most of the time anyway) though it tends to over-estimate wind strength and slightly under-estimates highest rainfall quantities (IMHO). I find the 6 hr GFS model trend provides an early 'lead' indication of changes to come in the next ECMWF run's path movement trend.

--
NOTE: I'm using customized color and detail overlays with the above images which can be obtained at the link below if you wish to see maximum graphical detail and the full data range and visual contrast. The standard overlays are OK for prosaic weather depiction but they omit a lot of the details relevant to extreme events, and to intense storms. You just don't see the details and proportions with them, as the big events can plot well outside of their available display range. i.e. extreme events can be present within a forecast, but is not being displayed within the standard overlay's plot range, so you can't and won't see just how extreme the forecast may be. Which is a pity as the model's extreme-range output is actually remarkably accurate, and provides outstanding early-warning of major events.

https://community.windy.com/topic/7787/windy-customized-graphics-version-3