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Tomas

Question: Why reported wind speed of hurricane is much higher than value forecasted by Windy?

Answer: Windy displays ECMWF or GFS global forecast model. Neither of them is capable to predict exact peak values.

Reasons:

1. Modeling: Numerical model computes grid that has finite resolution in both space and time (~10km in space horizontally, ~100-1000m vertically, ~1-6h in time). Peak values are smoothed, because of coarse grid resolution.
2. Analysis of input data: Calculations are based on measurements. They come from stations, radars, satellites and other sensors. These sensors are not always reliable, so extremal measurements can be considered as errors during data assimilation and thrown away to avoid damaging the computation.

Conclusions:

1. Numerical models are not good at prediction of local extreme values and phenomena. Examples: tornadoes, convective storms, hails, single convective clouds, single orographic clouds, extreme wind speed in storms or hurricanes.
2. Numerical models are good at prediction of averege and "smooth" values. Examples: average wind in last 3 hours, temperature, humidity, pressure field.

Altitude and coverage of convective clouds (cumuli) ...I will implement it one day :-) but if there are more people wanting this, please upvote!

@Edgington Hi, this is probably because of different calculation of both values.
Cloud base is directly taken from ECMWF parameter called "ceiling". It is height (above model orography i.e. AGL) of cloud layer covering more than 50% of the sky. It estimates height where you can expect "significant clouds". Detailed description is here: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/FCST/43r1+new+parameters%3A+Ceiling
On the other side the grey meteogram is calculated from relative humidity. It can be explained as a distribution of water in the atmosphere. The height in the meteogram is in pressure levels. km/ft values are only rough estimation and they are AMSL. I admit that this can be confusing.
Possible explanation of the difference: There could be signigicant humidity (almost 100%), so there are drawn clouds in meteogram, but the cloud coverage according to ECMWF is less than 50%, so the ceiling is considered to be higher.
In such strange case it is better to look also in cloud maps, which can give you better overview. However, if the location is in the mountains then the values can be misleading, because model orography is very rough.

@triggernometry @auweatherwatcher @emilyyyZzz They are girls and we call them so. We use such naming in common language. We do not have anonymous helpdesk, but we have Kori and Petra ...and unlike Alexa or Siri, they are real ;-)

This topic seems to be explosive. I understand that many people are against
"global warming religion", but think about it pragmatically.
If we call "Warming" the situation when "climate is changing rapidly and it is caused by mankind",
then there are 4 options:

A. Warming is not true and we believe it is not true
B. Warming is not true and we believe it is true
C. Warming is true and we believe it is true
D. Warming is true and we do not believe it is true

If we want to do any action we should behave pragmatically, economically, rationally.
Consider the damage control. There are 2 faults among these options: B. and D.
If B. is our reality we may waste our energy and money uselessly and our children will laugh at us in future.
If D. is our case, it means that we are borrowing our wealth from future generation, our children will hate us.
From this point of view the "panic" about Warming is completely understandable.

If we think about what is caused by humans: Daily weather is caused by humans. If you live in big city,
the temperature, moisture, evaporation, albedo, everything is massively influenced by human and you can measure it.
If you look at countryside from air, you can see that the terrain is completely changed by human. It also affects daily weather.
People have power to change the landscape, to destroy or plant whole forests.
Greenhouse hypothesis is about composition of atmosphere. I do not want to judge whether that hypothesis is true
or false. But people are moving fossil fuel from land to atmosphere. That is fact. One day all fossil fuel
will be moved from land to atmosphere, it will not magically disappear.
50000kg of airliners fuel means exactly 50000kg of waste. It is taken from land and put to air circulation.

Rising temperature is reality. Question is: Is it caused by our technical revolution? Nobody is sure, but there is correlation.
Do not cry, do not panic, just think about A, B, C, D.

Hi Jeff,
thank you for the feedback. It is not possible now.
Maybe we will consider this in some future release.

@fx-eddh said in Windy offers Sounding Forecast:

Stüve to Skew t-log p

Yes, we are considering switching between these "coordinate systems".

Today in the Czech Republic we remind people who passed away. So thank you @petra-pik again for everything! You will be always remembered in Windy team.

@MolnAir Hi, we are sorry, this was a fault on our server, not a problem on ECMWF side. We had difficulties with data importing, so there remained the old forecast. Everything is up and running now.
On Premium subscriptions: we are trying to find a balance between keeping most of the features free and giving good added value to premium users. A year ago there were just donations (no added value for our contributors). This year we came up with better temporal resolution of the forecasts and it is likely that we will be adding more premium features or maybe shifting some existing features to premium to keep the product attractive for our subscribers. We are developing Windy for people and we are happy that a part of them (like you) is willing to pay for it. Thank you!

@hannesp We will probably keep only the Arome 2.5km.

@javiclayton let's test it ;-) https://www.windy.com/?canHrdps,51.293,-90.774,5

The Ireland is covered by very detailed UKV model. Have you try it?

@木-阿-2 Hi, yes dew point is calculated where it is missing. And the same for relative humidity.
Sources for calculation:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point
[2] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/2/bams-86-2-225.xml

@Stalker31796 Hi, unfortunately nothing was ever free in the Windy. "Free" just means someone else is buying it for you. Our business model allows almost everything to stay free thanks to people willing to pay for subscription. We found it to be sustainable. Our previous "business model" was such that one sponsor paid for everything. It was not sustainable as the Windy grew rapidly.

@wolf1983 There are model forecasts for 72h prediction in Windy.

@Alex-H-Jones , it is hard to combine radar images with model forecast, because they are different, so we are not doing it. The "radar forecast" is just extrapolation of the observed movement. In most cases, model calculations are outdated compared to radar measurements and do not include the last observations. Also Windy provides multiple models with different predictions. So to keep things clear we separate model forecast from radar.

@Finlet-AU We changed it in the last update so you do not see nowcasting unless you click to "red bar".

Hi, we are sorry for the delay.
ACCESS model is updated now. We were not able to update model sooner, because only part of the data for the model run was received. So one whole update of the model was skipped at Windy. Data stream was restored and we have complete data for the latest model run. We apologize for any inconvenience.

It seems that folks at Melbourne have woken up, had their breakfast and fixed the data upload. So the Australian radar is back. ACCESS model is delayed as well, but we expect it to be updated soon.