It's now called flyXC soundings.

There are many improvements to the UI and even more changes under the hood.

I have written a longer post on the flyXC facebook page.

I'm pasting the last sections of the post below:

There are a few ways you can help the project:

• the README linked above is succinct. I would love some help with writing a nicer documentation
• you can also contribute code if there a feature you would like to see added - if you do not know how to code, you can still contribute ideas
• lastly you can sponsor the project. While the sounding plugin (as well as flyxc.app) is open source, it's nice to get some money to compensate the hours spent developing it

Do not hesitate to message me if you want to help.

Many thanks to windy.com for their awesome website and maintaining the plugin framework. Many thanks to John Kealy, his SkewT plugin released in 2019 was a great source of inspiration.

https://www.topaflyers.com/weather/soundings/drfsl.cgi?STATION=34.21%2C-117.32

Using the shortcut url windy.com/plugins/windy-plugin-sounding makes loading the plugin less tedious.

Anyway the scale on the left is the model calculated height taking account of the meteo conditions (i think at least).
I am pretty sure that the scale on the windy map on the right is the correct values at the "model pressure height" which is an approximate height in m or feet.

@gkikas-lgpz said in Sounding Plugin - for paraglider pilots:

..... at lower levels

point "B" marks the temp. at 600 hPa (13800 ft, FL140)
but the diagram shows 12000 ft (1800ft off).

"@matikru The green line starts at air temperature + some constant (4 or 5C if I remember correctly)."

It looks like you add 3 degrees: https://github.com/vicb/windy-plugin-sounding/blob/ce22dc08d0d436fee4024ab54dc1642bf6762369/src/containers/containers.js#L28

A 2 degrees shift seems to match fairly well with the thermal top overlay, within a few 100 feet.

Now we are on the off season in the southern hemisphere, but will compare to reality in the flying season.

Of course I am aware we are talking forecasts, and there is always uncertainty and error, but I think the green line adds to that error on the optimistic side.

Mostly what I mean is that the rising air don't get as warm as the ground.

I think that rising air typically needs a few more degree than the surrounding air to rise.

Or am I missing something totally? :)

But, since as you noted "The air close to the ground doesn't usually get warmer as it would start rising" do I understand correctly that the green line should actually start (at the ground level) quite at the same temperature level that the red line starts?

So actually this 4-5 C constant is introduced just for better usability of the diagram, as this green and the red line would just overlap usually?

Btw - I get it now that considering model errors etc. it doesn't make such a difference, I just want to understand the logic behind.

Check a typical example:

You can see that the value of the constant usually doesn't matter that much for the days we are interested in. You have to remember that we look at a model which is an imperfect prediction plus the nature of the soil varies greatly inside a single cell of the model (cells are 9x9km for ECMWF).

In practice it works reasonably well. The air close to the ground doesn't usually get warmer as it would start rising.

If the cloud cover is thick it might be harder for the air temperature to become that warm.

If the temperature (red) and green line (parcel) slowly converge instead of being parallel, that could also be due to the poor resolution of the model (there are not that many points along the altitude axis).

Hope this helps.

One question (sorry if a dummy one):
How do you determine where the green line starts on the ground?

I see that "The green line shows the temperature of an ascending parcel" but why on the ground it has this particular temperature?

Is there some meteorological constant or formula based on which we know that a bubble would need this-or-that higher temperature than surrounding to start rising?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my mind, this starting point is crucial in understanding how strong and how high thermals will be, so I'm wondering (as a gliding pilot) how exactly to interpret this and how to actually know when during the day my lovely bubbles will start to rise.

Excellent! Works well.