Best posts made by vsinceac

FYI, NCEP/NOAA outages are generally announced here in real time: https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/status/messages/.
A priori some internet fiber was cut at Boulder and model download web site was completly unavailable between 0937Z FRI AUG 27 2021 and 1801Z FRI AUG 27 2021.

@bobluck said in Option to set default view.:

Can’t I just set a preferred view and have it saved?

Yep, I think such a new feature, i.e. kind of option "keep currently enabled data overlays on next user sessions" (and why not current map coverage, too?), would be welcome for many use cases. At least for users who often use same data layers and/or map coverage...

• Wind Speed and Directions are always comes as wrong: please compare with real-time observations; Windy just plots on maps model forecasts provided by weather centers, it doesn't compute any forecast. Moreover, model forecasts computed on grids with 25 km / pixel resolution cannot be too precise over mountain/valley areas, where wind forecast values are particularly hard to predict.
• How we can understand 3 to 4 hrs ago that a specific cloud will come to a specific place?: just watch the forecast for next 3-4 hours (use the time bar).
• What is meant by >240 in this map: which data layer did you selected on that screenshot?
• No one replying: please, next time you post a question on such a community site, wait a bit more than 6 minutes for an answer...

OSCAR is not only full of stations: above all, it is the single, official reference for all ALL WMO/WIGOS observing stations...

Even more useful would be to get isolines rendering option to all pertinent data layers (not only pressure), and also to be also able to configure isolines interval value (like for color shading palettes), for each parameter.

WMO observing network contains both ships (voluntary observing ships or part of GTS network) and buoy stations.
Some met offices even use drones, turtles, whales, etc. as support for ocean weather sensors...
Buoys are generally static, ships are generally moving; both of them should have a series of standard weather sensors defined by WMO and provide messages of type SHIP or BUOY (which are extensions to the more generic SYNOP mesages). Ogimet web site (for example) provides part of them here (screenshot below).
WMO/GTS naming rules of all ocean observing stations are defined here.

I guess the required info (and much more) is already provided on UI, via the Info control, for currently selected model:

Windy only displays real time observations and values computed in weather forecast models, while fronts are not present in the latest.

Fronts are only drawn by expert forecasters in very specific weather forecast messages (e.g. SIGWX), based on the human analysys of different data sources: deterministic and ensemble weather models, real time observations (SYNOP/TEMP/etc.), satellite remote sensing and even climatological data and local knowledge. Such a message is only provided by specialized regional or national weather centers and cannot be computed by algorythms with enough accuracy.

Enter the keyword fronts in the Search control to get more info from community discussions related to this topic.

See also this article, which says: Frontal analysis in modern forecasting is still a critical part of a forecaster’s toolkit, and not just because fronts are often associated with precipitation. Fronts can strongly impact local weather conditions via wind changes, convective forcing, turbulence and more. While many computer-based weather visualization packages can identify frontal zones on the large scale, they usually lack nuance in positioning of the front on the regional and local scales, which poses issues for short-range forecasting of all kinds, especially aviation. Additionally, a thorough examination of surface observations to create a hand-analysis of surface pressure systems and fronts, even if not truly completed “by hand” and instead in a 3D mental model space, allows the forecaster to become intimately familiar with the current weather in a way that examining a computer frontal analysis cannot. Situational awareness is gained, as well as conceptual awareness of synoptic processes, mesoscale processes, storm-scale processes and topographic influences that are interacting to create the “wiggles” one sometimes sees in a front’s position. These wiggles, or surges, can be caused by outflow from an MCS merging with the larger synoptic scale cold front, are sometimes powered by a secondary push of cold air that has mixed down from upper levels, and for other reasons. Although it takes more time up front in the forecast process, the knowledge gained from this analysis process often makes the rest of the forecast process go much faster - many extraneous pressure level charts of basic state variables can be skipped and the forecaster can go directly to regional and local scale variables of interest to address the forecast problems of day.

This discussion (as well as many other community discussions, e.g. this one), makes me thinking that adding a collection of 3rd party, pertinent URLs to Windy UI would be really helpful to many users (and to Windy, too).

Of course such a 3rd party web sites are not intended to replace, nor to compete with Windy.com.
A good sample is the link provided in comment just above, which is for a web site specialized in dust forecast, provided by a research laboratory.
Windy.com has not the required resources to (and should not) compete with big research laboratories (e.g. official WMO product providers), but could advantageously provide such a pertinent list to its users; I guess everybody would win...

Such a pertinent URLs list may be pretty long, thus items may be grouped by category (e.g. "Weather Alerts", "LRF Models", "NWP Models Data Providers", "Local Forecasts Europe/NA/Asia/country/Etc)", "Satellite Imagery", etc.).
Its appearance may be also as discrete as needed (e.g. placed in the main Menu, just after Windy Plugins), in order to not change current look and feel of Windy UI.
Of course each URL link could and should have a full description (e.g. as OnMouseOver tooltip).

Btw., such a link to OSM Community web site could save a lot of time to both users and administrators and avoid all these long and boring posts about missing roads or wrong country names on Windy maps...

Moreover, as Windy has many occasional or permanent users and part of them are meteorologists, forecasters, pilots, I guess many of them would be happy to propose and share pertinent URLs which would be really helpful to users with less knowledge in these domains.
Btw., the community discussions already contain a pretty big collection of links to pertinent 3rd party web sites...

Only automatic weather stations refresh at such a frequency.
You can also use observations for closest METAR weather stations (every 30m).
For clouds you can use images from METEOSAT satellite, refreshed every 15m. Radar data is also available in your area, but it doesn't provide clouds or wind observations.
Forecast models available on Windy only have validities for every hour (in best cases).

A closer look to the 2D plot above shows 2 time series for temperatures; as explained above:

• one is for ICON model forecasted values (each 9km²), interpolated for the position of WMO Station ID 94576 (blue dashed line)
• the other (color shading curve) is for values measured by WMO Station ID 94576

For a point on Earth, there are no other trustfull real time temperatures than measured by a WMO surface weather station (here, BRISBANE). As one can see, the two time series are pretty close each other; details for a sample point in time selected on right side show same value on both curves.

Imho., computing temperatures for the next couple of days with such an accuracy, is a great achievement of the science and technology; a couple of dozen of years ago, this was simply impossible.

Btw., ICAO stations on airports generally provide METAR messages, where measured temperatures are conventionally rounded to integer value; thus they are already affected by errors up to +/-0.5°C.

ICON is not "my model", it is provided by DWD; behind such a model are dozens of years of scientific research; computing a global model requires the most powerfull computers in the world. Thus I apologize, I couldn't be able to look closer "into the problem", nor to "fix my model" myself (and I'm sure Windy also couldn't).

But if one would think these models are all so wrong, then one should explain this to the guys who compute them (and provide them for free), and suggest them some good ideas (this should be possible on the web sites of NCEP/NOAA, DWD, ECMWF); I bet they will highly appreciate such constructive help... ("unless its intentional" and they would devilishly introduce some delta values for temperatures just for kidding with Oz people :o))).

Otherwise, when people using weather forecast models want to get the better one for their very local position, generally they try to compare each of them to measures from closest WMO weather stations, then use the one with best match. Generally people don't denigrate these models, people use them as they are; weather forecas modelling never claimed to be an exact science, as you think.

Actually I personally think that the best weather forecast model for Oz should be local models provided by BOM met office; unfortunately (as a developer said two years ago here), Windy cannot provide these models as they are not free.

Anyway... Nowadays everyone can buy a weather station from Amazon for two pence, thus no need for all those wrong, boring scientific models, isn't it? Finally, every aifone and every aiwatch can measure temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, heartbeats and even holy koronav presence, can send e-mails and tweets; why spending public money in scientific research - which gets so wrong results - while gadgets vendors take care of the whole stuff so well?

I don't think the request for "climate change layer" would be related to current weather forecast models (i.e. data layers for fire, hurricane, air quality, extreme forecast or yet fires).
I think it is rather about anomalies of observerd or forecasted values related to climatological normals...
At this stage, climatological normals (generally computed over 30 years period), are not currently available on Windy (while they could and they should imho.).

Just found this recent video made by a 13 years old (sic!) hurricane hunter.
As many questions posted by Windy community users are answered inside, it may be interesting to watch.

Such a remark would legitimately raise a couple of questions: where, when, which forecast data layer, how wrong, why worst (compared to what)?

This is the risk to take when using non-WMO weather stations. Nowadays everyone can buy on ebay and other amazons a so-called "weather station" for a couple of dollars, and then push on the web measures taken by any kind of sensors. Just be aware that many of these stations are not calibrated and thus not trustworthy.
Obviously the temperature sensors (at least) of station EW3441 are fucked off, while the owner is not aware or doesn't care about it. See more details here. Windy cannot handle this, it just displays without any control the measures sent by these stations. You should maybe ask more the owner of the station (maybe alanhenry53@hotmail.com).
As a conclusion: one should always trust WMO stations against personal weather stations.

@michille Try this in Settings:

All GFS 0.25° grib files provided by NCEP/NOAA after this upgrade do contain announced changes. I don't know if Windy downloads grids of all available parameters/levels: data is huge (>0.5 GB for each forecast), while downloaded grids may be filtered by both coverage, forecast, parameter and level.
Obviously not all available parameters and levels are available via Windy UI.
Anyway, introducing all parameters and levels on UI would be useless for most of the Windy users (e.g. some parameters are available for levels 0.1 hPa, 0.2 hPa, etc.); they would be only useful for research purpose.