Users of Windy: why do you want historical weather data?
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The new future is great! Thanks for the quick responses. I look forward to windy becoming better and better everyday.
Best Regards,
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@garlandz I feel I should mention again (third time this thread!) – I don't work for Windy! This thread is a discussion between users :)
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@johnckealy hot air baloonist and GA flyer here - my reasons and use for historical data:
(1) assume I do a flight and some meteorological situation crops up which I did was not aware of/did not look at
(2) assume some flight accident happened. The press typically reports sensationalistic nonsense like so: https://www.austrianwings.info/2019/06/heissluftballon-in-kilb-abgestuerzt/ . And a proper accident investigation takes forever, und you might not hear of the results. The national ATC organisations arent much better - they typically delete forecasts right away - no going back.
In both cases I would like to go back in time, and see myself if I could have avoided the situation - basically for my learning, and to answer questions of concerned people.
Both use cases involve a time window of a few days max. Two days would already be great!
Personally I have no use for historical data going back further in time.
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Thanks for the comments @mhaberler. You've hit on an important concept here. Is there such a thing as a "historical weather forecast"? You seems to be alluding to model data. The important question is this – could you have avoided a dangerous situation if you had looked at the forecast an hour before flying vs. 3 days before flying? Which model run is the one to reference?
We've talked about creating more detailed surface analyses before. But with an investigation, for example, you would need to know what forecast data you had available at the time (and what's its lead time was). Not only that, but which model. Weather forecast models are an extremely fluid thing, and are just a tool. This is why, when stakes are high, companies shell out for private forecasting companies who employ real forecasters. And with a proper accident investigation, it's usually time to do that. I can't speak to other modelling centres, but I know the UK Met Office archive all their UM forecasts (which cost an obscene amount in storage), so that they can be referenced later.
But, if we're just taking about your own learning, it sounds like a surface analysis would do the job nicely. Surface analyses are traditionally just synoptic charts (isobars and fronts), but I think we can do better. I may just start working on something like that myself (though with one year left, I should probably make a stab at starting to write my PhD thesis).
Let me ask you this @mhaberler, what level of detail would you need to "see if you could have avoided a situation"? Highs and lows? Surface winds? Gusts? Winds at all levels? Precipitation? Visibility? As gridded data or just at airfields? I have some aviation forecasting experience, but we were very focused on just our own airfields, and the WAFC/LOLAN guys used to take care of the rest.
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@johnckealy said in Users of Windy: why do you want historical weather data?:
Thanks for the comments @mhaberler. You've hit on an important concept here. Is there such a thing as a "historical weather forecast"? You seems to be alluding to model data. The important question is this – could you have avoided a dangerous situation if you had looked at the forecast an hour before flying vs. 3 days before flying? Which model run is the one to reference?
that is the secondary goal
First, I would love our wonderful and super-expensive ATC corporations would provide their forecasts not just from today onwards, but a couple of days back. Just what they publish on their aviation briefing website. That would cover 90% of my learning needs. Could I have avoided that situation if I had read the aviation briefing more diligently? Note: no historical 'data', no fancy UI and yadayada - JUST their briefs. So wrong forum here.
the other 10% of my needs would be going back in time for a few days max and look for stuff which was NOT in the aviation briefs. For instance, the accident linked above was due to a cold are pressure wave within the inversion layer, and it was NOT in the aviation briefs.
Let me ask you this @mhaberler, what level of detail would you need to "see if you could have avoided a situation"? Highs and lows? Surface winds? Gusts? Winds at all levels? Precipitation? Visibility? As gridded data or just at airfields? I have some aviation forecasting experience, but we were very focused on just our own airfields, and the WAFC/LOLAN guys used to take care of the rest.
I know.. the aviation weather forecasts are of so-so for ballooning and of moderate value at best if you do long-distance/high altitude. Example: predicting northerly föhn a few days ahead - in reality you get hints for föhn-affected terminal areas like Innsbruck and not much beyond.
For a short-range check a few hours before a pedestrian flight I mostly do precipitation, visibility, clouds/fog, average wind, wind gusts, shears. An important value for us is winds/gusts in the planned landing area, and here forecasts outside of large airports scarce and unreliable - we replace that by webcam views (sometimes you can judge wind that way), private weather stations, and experience about typical valley wind systems.
for long-distance over mountains a lot more is involved - vertical profiles, soundings, wave prediction, sometimes even likelyhood of a hydraulic jump. For longer-term prediction Rossby waves in the FL180 Geopotential forecast help - black line cutting the Alps N/S is a good predictor a few days out. As the flight comes closer, you look at the more local phenomena - ground wind etc like for a pedestrian flight.
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Nice one @mhaberler, sounds like you know your stuff! The Föhn effect is a really tricky beast to forecast; actually, pretty much all mountain-based phenomena in general are a nightmare to get right. As people rely more and more on the models, the forecasters who can actually understand and predict this stuff become a dying breed... But that's a general thing, and for the marjoity of these phenomena, it's only the pilot that will ever see it, not the weather models, and not the observations network. So historical data wouldn't be much help anyway right? But then again, the charts can certainly show you the right conditions for these things to form. If pilots had a medium to add in local scale phenomena that they saw on a flight to a historical chart, that would be pretty cool. That way, they could reference what they saw when that setup reoccurs. I'm getting more and more interested in creating this myself...
By the way, with the aviation briefs, what's the "aviation briefing website"? Could you give me a link? Also, I just spent some time on working on my skewT platform tephigrams.org over the weekend, some vertical profiles, if it helps at all.
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@johnckealy yes, historical data for would not be relevant back more than a few days. But then I am just an amateur pilot.
aviation briefing: well Air traffic control organsations run weather briefing and flight planning services, like for instance Nav Canada - I guess in the UK it's https://www.nats.aero
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@johnckealy I see this thread is a bit old, but thought I would respond anyway. As an aviation accident investigator most all of my work is forensic in nature, and the ability to efficiently pull historical weather information is extremely valuable. Always looking for more "tools" to put in my toolbox, I really like how intuitive and simple to use this application is, and I can load up a flight track from radar or ADS-B in a matter of seconds. With historical weather information available, I can get a "quick look" at the weather at a particular time of an accident flight track in seconds and make this information available to other investigators responding before ever even arriving on site. Absolutely invaluable. Just thought I'd chime in and let you know maybe something some don't think too much about!
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As a backcountry skier, being able to review the last 24 – 72 hours of wind history would be extremely helpful to understand where I'm likely to encounter slopes that have been wind-loaded with snow. This is frequently a major route planning consideration. Would be happy to pay for this as a "premium" feature.
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very simply to plan a long passage. eg .shall I do it in may or september?
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@Mais78
With the purpose of long passage, you better use the Pilot Charts, which give a probability of wind and current month by month. -
If historical model data would be available, I’d use them for evaluating in retrospect which model would have given me the best forecast. In my case data for the last week would suffice for that purpose.
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In this case you could use the Observation vs Forecast feature. The forecast was displayed at same time with observed wind and temperature during several days. Unfortunately at the moment the past forecast is shown only for few hours. But this feature should be back in future.
https://community.windy.com/topic/9425/how-to-use-the-observation-vs-forecast-feature
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@idefix37 said in Users of Windy: why do you want historical weather data?:
In this case you could use the Observation vs Forecast feature. The forecast was displayed at same time with observed wind and temperature during several days. Unfortunately at the moment the past forecast is shown only for few hours. But this feature should be back in future.
https://community.windy.com/topic/9425/how-to-use-the-observation-vs-forecast-feature
Thank you very much—got it, works.
Btw, I didn't realize this was an old thread already but it was my first post here and someone else had pushed this topic to the top :)
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Really late chiming in but just wanted to say this is a fantastic discussion and really enjoyed reading it. :)
A slightly different usage that I'm more familiar with is to understand building energy consumption in relations to weather, for instance for electricity demand prediction and building energy simulation. Weather is such a big driver in this area that without historical weather data, it would be very difficult to plan and design critical infrastructures (buildings, electricity grid) that we all depend on.
Joseph
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Hi dear admins,
on 10.10.2021 (afternoon) we sailed over Kvarner bay in Croatia.
There exists a virtual Spot named "Virtual Buoy Northadria".
As we had pretty high (but aible to sail) waves, I'm curious about the values of wave hight.
Just to compare experienced waves to forecasts in future trips.
(We had no internet connection at this time.)Is it possible to get these values?
Thanks a lot in advance
Nicki -
@nickis Hello, it is not possible, we do not store any historical data at the moment.
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@korina OK, thanks. Then I will stop searching.
Anyway, thank you a lot for your job!!
