Thank you for the help. I've been on the boat the last couple of days (working on it, not sailing :-( Tomorrow I'll study up on these different options.

@William-Caine said in Winds:

I am trying to understand the the elevation of winds. I do not know what exactly to type into a browser to find this knowledge. Can someone help explain what the designations me, that is, such s “FL140”. What elevations can be applied to these?

Conventional airplane altimeters use barometric pressure to determine altitude. When you are taking off and landing, it is important to know your height above the ground. So you set your altimeter's barometer to match the local pressure. But someone taking off from an airport far away might have set a different local pressure into their barometer. So you and he may be flying along, thinking one is higher than the other, but because of the difference in how your instruments are set, you could end up at the same altitude.

So when you are flying any distance it is more important to know the altitudes of other aircraft flying around you. So everyone sets their altimeters to a standard barometric pressure. Then everyone's altitude relative to each other is known and you can maintain separation - you are less likely to crash into someone. These altitudes are known as "Flight Levels" in order to differentiate them from true altitudes above ground or sea level. Flight levels are measured in 100s of feet. So FL140 would be an altitude of 14,000 feet as measured by standard barometric pressure.

Thank you for the help. I've been on the boat the last couple of days (working on it, not sailing :-( Tomorrow I'll study up on these different options.

@idefix37 I was not aware of the 5 weather models. I will check them. They are all forecasts, but just different methods? Where can I learn about them?

@idefix37 So they could check an anemometer and report 1.5kts of wind, but they'd rather guess wrong by that much? It doesn't change my concern. If I cannot rely on it, I'll need to look elsewhere.

I sail in San Diego and use Windy to plan my sailing days. Last week it looked like Saturday would be a good sailing day. On Saturday morning it only showed 6-7 kts of wind during the middle six hours of the day - not great, but enough. But it rarely got to 6 kts all day long and sometime in the afternoon the wind totally died. Like just about zero windspeed. As I was starting the engine (you cannot steer a boat with no water passing over the rudder) I looked at the app on my phone and it said I was experiencing 11 kts of wind. Wow! Wouldn't that have been nice! But the wind gauge said 1 to 1.4 kts.
I fussed with the phone to make sure I had a good Internet connection and I did. But it continued to tell me the wind speed at my location was 11.5kts.

I've been very impressed with Windy for the last year and a half or so, but have been losing confidence in it during the last month. This is the first time the errors have been so obvious, though. I can easily forgive erroneous forecasts, but the current windspeed is not a forecast, it is a measurement. If Windy cannot report that accurately, then nothing else can be considered reliable.

So I'd like to know what is going on. Is there some problem that the programmers are addressing? (If not, then they need to.) I really don't want to have to go looking for a replacement.

@William-Caine said in Winds:

I am trying to understand the the elevation of winds. I do not know what exactly to type into a browser to find this knowledge. Can someone help explain what the designations me, that is, such s “FL140”. What elevations can be applied to these?

Conventional airplane altimeters use barometric pressure to determine altitude. When you are taking off and landing, it is important to know your height above the ground. So you set your altimeter's barometer to match the local pressure. But someone taking off from an airport far away might have set a different local pressure into their barometer. So you and he may be flying along, thinking one is higher than the other, but because of the difference in how your instruments are set, you could end up at the same altitude.

So when you are flying any distance it is more important to know the altitudes of other aircraft flying around you. So everyone sets their altimeters to a standard barometric pressure. Then everyone's altitude relative to each other is known and you can maintain separation - you are less likely to crash into someone. These altitudes are known as "Flight Levels" in order to differentiate them from true altitudes above ground or sea level. Flight levels are measured in 100s of feet. So FL140 would be an altitude of 14,000 feet as measured by standard barometric pressure.