I would be interested in alerts when a particular value combination arises in the forecast.

The overall alert condition is a combination of several subexpressions.

let me lay out the idea by example:

given:
location1, location2, location3, time-of-day1, time-of-day2
maxtemp

if  (temperature(location1, time-of-day1, surface) < maxtemp) AND
    (wind(location1, time-of-day1, surface, IconEU) < 10km/h) AND
    (wind(location2, time-of-day2, FL180, ECMWF) > 80 km/h) AND
    (wind_direction(location2, time-of-day2,FL180, ECMWF) between 290 and 20 degrees)) AND
    (wind(location3, time-of-day3, surface, IconEU) < 10km/h) AND
    (temperature(location2, time-of-day1, surface) < maxtemp)

then
   create alert("Alps crossing possible")

having this done once nightly looking into the future as far as models provide that would be super useful.

I admit the parameterization is complex and probably pushing the envelope for a mobile gui - it might be more productive to address the issue algorithmically (plugin idea!)

thanks for this great tool!

Assuming the average alert user is as clueless about Javascript as I am:

a framework feature for generating alarms, and a set of predefined, selectable (possibly user-contributed) JS fragments (really condition expressions) which can be parameterized:

that would go a long way without the complexity of a full-blown programming language based solution

I thought you might like this:

a local flight in Styria last month:
https://cesium.com/cesiumjs/cesium-viewer/?source=https://static.mah.priv.at/cors/stiwoll-muggauberg.czml

two balloons crossing the Alps late last year:
https://cesium.com/cesiumjs/cesium-viewer/?source=https://static.mah.priv.at/cors/filzmoos-treviso-oesoe-oesfy.czml

the trajectory lines are generated from the GPX files the windy-traj plugin offers as download, the flight tracks are actual GPS data

motivational screenshot of the latter flight:

and here is a 360° video of that flight:

note the whole animation is encapsulated in a single CZML file and just uses the public CesiumViewer service from the Cesium project

• Michael

ps: for the curious: this documents arguments to the CesiumViewer

Re: anybody working on a trajectory plugin?

is that planned to work eventually?
will it never work for some reason?

thanks! pawed through the FAQ and articles - couldnt find an answer

The most prestigious gas balloon race in the world is the annual Gordon Bennet Cup

Pilots stay aloft for several days and might cross the continent

To get an idea, here's a video of the tracks flown this year:

The teams have (and need!) a ground crew which advises pilots on weather and tactics

This year, windy and traj were part of the games - in the ground support for the Belgian, Spanish and US teams - Kolja Packard wrote up a field report (he was part of the support team and worked the weather forecasts):

(this is still german-only, I will post an english translation shortly and notify here):

https://blog.mah.priv.at/index.php/2019/10/01/erfahrungsbericht-einsatz-von-windy-beim-gordon-bennet-cup/

In particular, have a look at the very first image in the blog post - this was the track forecast 20 hours (!) before takeoff

compare that to the youtube video above - the match is amazing!

Many thanks to Kolja in writing this up!

have you considered turning off notifications for a start?

@rittels Thanks for this phenomenal job!

this is already very useful - will do a balloon ride tomorrow early morning and see how that fares relative to the plot!

If I may add a suggestion:

if you select several altitudes on the plot it is hard to discern which track belongs to which altitude

why not choose different colors for each track in the plot and color the altitudes in 'Select levels' accordingly?

• Michael

semi-related: I wrote up a tutorial on Alps crossings with a hot air balloon as there is next to zero material available on the issue

it gives an idea of the meteorological prerequisites: http://static.mah.priv.at/public/alpcrossing/assets/player/KeynoteDHTMLPlayer.html#0

(suggestions for improvement and bug reports welcome)

Here's something neat: visualize an expected balloon flight in 3D based on a windy trajectory:

https://ayvri.com/scene/49j7m8dzje/cjzp38qi200013d5vtyo4jj3j

The GPX file was created with windy.com and the traj plugin. It includes an ascent and descent phase of 2m/s and level flight at 1500m. The GPX file was then uploaded to ayvri.com (free account required).

The ayvri visualization is based on cesium.js - for the curious, play here: https://cesiumjs.org/Cesium/Apps/Sandcastle/index.html?src=CZML Path.html

Here's another long jump - from today

435km in under 4hrs, peak 80kts - and phenomenal forecast accuracy!

https://blog.mah.priv.at/gpsvisualizer/20200105044229-47167-map.html

I thought you might like this:

a local flight in Styria last month:
https://cesium.com/cesiumjs/cesium-viewer/?source=https://static.mah.priv.at/cors/stiwoll-muggauberg.czml

two balloons crossing the Alps late last year:
https://cesium.com/cesiumjs/cesium-viewer/?source=https://static.mah.priv.at/cors/filzmoos-treviso-oesoe-oesfy.czml

the trajectory lines are generated from the GPX files the windy-traj plugin offers as download, the flight tracks are actual GPS data

motivational screenshot of the latter flight:

and here is a 360° video of that flight:

note the whole animation is encapsulated in a single CZML file and just uses the public CesiumViewer service from the Cesium project

• Michael

ps: for the curious: this documents arguments to the CesiumViewer

Re: anybody working on a trajectory plugin?

seems the author lost interest and vanished the git repo: https://github.com/aibfamilyflight/windy-sigmet

@mhaberler forgot: reload windy.com after changing the time

@idefix37 @Korina for me too -> BUT it's a day later now

try this to reproduce:

• force your platform's time back to Oct 25, past 3am (just set my mac to Oct 25, 21:48)
• this is AFTER the winter time change, because that happened October 25, 3:00 am so the time delta should be 1 hour
• peruse the time selector: the time difference remains 2hrs even looking at Nov 1 (!)

note also the time selector remains equidistant 1h - I guess it should display 3am loc twice and switch the difference to UTC on the second 3am mark from 2 to 1hr

looks like a fencepost issue to me

while this doesnt look terribly important I hint to the fact that such time jumps by an hour can be really nasty in VFR aviation

I envy nobody trying to get this right.. I wish they would get rid of this seasonal switching altogether

@idefix37 I guess somebody with access to the code needs to figure out wether it's this rounding issue I already reported or a generic timezone snafu, hard to tell apart

location and current time is 17:23 UTC, 18:23 loc in Hartberg, Austria - 1h difference:

This is what windy.com displays with 'UTC on' setting:

Note 2 hour difference - the switch to winter DST was yesterday

Michael

is it just me? I'm getting this error message on all browsers when opening https://community.windy.com/ :

oh, and embeds of course

just stumbled over this - seems Austria actually pioneered the field back in 1849:

On This Day: Austria Drops Balloon Bombs on Venice

@marekd I really appreciate you're listening

come to think of it, could well be this will create kind of an aftermarket - like collections of reusable links for a certain purpose; also great to add to websites