Best posts made by idefix37

@ivo
Vote 2: AROME

AROME is available as free data. Very interesting along coastline, in mountain zone and for local forecasts (thunderstorms, large towns effect...)

@ivo
Great idea to mix the layer of rain and lightning

@ivo
I’ve just changed the colors of this layer, considering White for 0°C.
Then I have kept the default colors for positive temperatures, except for the highest. I have replaced the Black by White, because I keep the image of a piece of steel that you heat. It takes successively these colors: Red-brown, red, light red and finally white, with no risk for me to confuse with the 0°C color.
For the negative colors I have changed the default colors too. There are OK near the ground but in high altitude e.g. at 500hPa, I would like more color changes. Just need to work on it.

@robbrooks33
Fronts are NOT drawn by numerical weather forecast models, but by skill weather forecast meteorologists.
As Windy shows maps directly and automatically issued from weather forecast models, there is no way to show fronts.

In addition, what brings the plot of fronts? The position of the air masses? The changes of direction, and the eventual strengthening, of the wind? The type of weather, cloud systems, precipitation? All of this you find it in detail on Windy. The fronts were imagined in the 1930s, at the time when this synthetic and graphic presentation allowed a simplified representation of current and forecasted weather. Today's weather models provide much more detailed forecasts, even if they are not able to offer drawings of fronts.

Personnaly, I use to look at Temperature layer at 850hPa which gives a rough idea of the location of the different fronts...

@gkikas-lgpz
There are different thickness of flash symbol as it can be seen on this zoomed view on a thunderstorm area in North Dakota this morning at 9h00 UTC. They correspond roughly to the lightning density.

In winter is it possible to have snow precipitation and thunderstorm at the same place? Then it could give some display trouble?

@phil-lay58
The seastate that you can observe in a given place, is a mix of different type of waves:

• The windsea (also called wind waves) is produced by the local wind.

• The main swell is produced by a strong wind in a remote place. The swell travels great distances to where you observe it.

• Secondary swells are produced also by winds in other remote places.

All of them have different heights, come from different directions and show different periods (i.e. the time between 2 wave crests)
Swell 1 is the main swell,
Swell 2 and 3 are secondary swells
The swell classification 1, 2, 3 depends on their respective heights

You find this detail on Windy by pressing the amber arrow on the picker.

@tz
Hi, here you find some information and data sources about wildfires over the world.

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#z:6;c:-3.2,14.4;d:2018-10-10..2018-10-11

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/web-services/

The colour palette used for the wind layer can be optimized for navigation at sea.
Most sailors know and use the Beaufort scale. Each degree of this scale corresponds to a range of wind and to a sea state. Therefore it is useful to calibrate the wind speed range according to the Beaufort scale. In this way, at a glance, it is possible to know which are the areas concerned by a certain wind force.
These settings are based on the following considerations:

• Light winds are displayed by light colors while strong winds are shown by denser, darker colours for an intuitive approach. However beyond 64 kt i.e. 12 Bf or Hurricane force, rather than being darker, the colours become very clear « like LED lights ».
• Each wind range is represented by a uniform colour without shading or smoothing, with only a small mixing transition.
• From 64 kt, colours are chosen according to degrees used by NHC (Cat.1, Cat.2...)
• Choice of colours has been mainly based on GREEN when conditions are the best for sailing (4Bf - 5 Bf), ORANGE when conditions become tougher (6Bf) and RED when a coastal cruising sailboat must find a shelter (7Bf - 8Bf).

HOW TO APPLY THESE COLOUR SETTINGS ?

Go to Settings
Choose Modify colours
Select overlay: Wind
At bottom of page find the line For developers
Click on [show gradient] to open a window pop up
Delete the text code in this window
Copy the code here below and paste it in the window
Then press [Import Gradient]
Press Save
Note that you must be login to apply these settings in your Windy cloud.

[[1.5,[134,163,171]],
[2.5,[126,152,188,256]],
[4.12,[110,143,208,256]],
[4.63,[110,143,208,256]],
[6.17,[15,147,167,256]],
[7.72,[15,147,167,256]],
[9.26,[57,163,57,256]],
[10.29,[57,163,57,256]],
[11.83,[194,134,62,256]],
[13.37,[194,134,63,256]],
[14.92,[200,66,13,256]],
[16.46,[200,66,13,256]],
[18,[210,0,50,256]],
[20.06,[215,0,50,256]],
[21.6,[175,80,136]],
[23.66,[175,80,136]],
[25.21,[117,74,147]],
[27.78,[117,74,147]],
[29.32,[68,105,141,256]],
[31.89,[68,105,141]],
[33.44,[194,251,119,256]],
[42.18,[194,251,119,256]],
[43.72,[241,255,109,256]],
[48.87,[241,255,109,256]],
[50.41,[256,256,256,256]],
[57.61,[256,256,256,256]],
[59.16,[0,256,256,256]],
[68.93,[0,256,256,256]],
[69.44,[256,37,256,256]]]

Try to use these new colours during at least one week. If you like them, keep them. If you don’t like, you can come back to the default Windy settings by pressing Load defaults

If you keep them, you can use the wind speed units that you like ...kt...km/h...mph...m/s

WIND SPEEDS EASY TO IDENTIFY BY COLOURS :

EXAMPLE OF WIND FIELD WITH NEW COLOUR SETTINGS :

@svenson
Weather radars show rain/snow in the near past. The wind overlay is forecasted wind ... in the futur. So difficult to mix them.
At least you can select Reported wind and Radar, you will have both rain and wind, but not sure at the same time.

@wxcycles

Before « selling » your own color settings, it should be better first to show what they look like, with few screenshots ! Don’t you think so?

@flarkey
What should be the benefit of land and sea in different color? Most of layers like Wind, Temperature, Pressure ... cover completely the map, so you could not see what is below.
Then Rain being in blue, above the sea it would be quite difficult to distinguish where it’s raining or not.

@ivo
Very clever !
For sure, this feature will be useful to appreciate which is the best model locally.

At the same time, I see that you have launched AROME ! This is a real benefit for the region covered by this high resolution model.

What a beautiful « picture » of the Alps it gives with the Temperature layer !

@deusnovus
As Tomber 42 explains, Humidity is a sublayer of Temperature. So to see Humidity in the quick menu, you need to click first to Temperature. It’s the same for Gust, need to click on Wind, or Visibility, need to click on Cloud....

Hi,
Maps seem sharper along sea shore and in mountains if I remember how it was before. Fine!
I does not like the palet of colours for wind below 6kts. The colours are too dense for wind of 0, 1 or 2kts... so I will change that in the colour palet settings.
OK for the new layers. I just regret that you have not added a colour layer for Geopential Height which is still only available as isoline.
Many thanks for this great job !!

@dzuremar
And for version 16.... something similar to the App "Weather 4D" which allows to mix different layers as you like. This App is not free and is mainly based on GFS.

@dzuremar
Yes, it's an nice idea for future development of Windy ! And don't forget to offer possibility of mixing different layers too.

@tomber42
Excellent !!

@meteo-gr
In other term, do you mean that wind speed is the 10-min average speed forecasted at beginning of the 3 hours and the gusts is the max gust forecasted during these 3 hours?

@emsdude54
Weather radars provide images of instant rainfall. If you gather images during the last hour, it will give you a sort of video of the last rainfall during this hour.
A radar can NEVER provide predictive images.
Same as your camera can take pictures or video but never predict the futur.