[HN Gopher] Windy.com
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Windy.com
Author : kaycebasques
Score : 300 points
Date : 2021-09-10 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (windy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (windy.com)
| sgarman wrote:
| This site has been popular in some aviation sports like
| paragliding. At least from my casual observations.
| SCAQTony wrote:
| I use it for surf forecasting. When you click on "waves" icon,
| the menu extends and there is an icon for a surfer. Click the
| surfer and not only do you get a different "heat" map but
| wherever you click will give you the swell for that location.
| mig39 wrote:
| I've been using Windy to keep an eye on Hurricane Larry and my
| friends and relatives in St. John's, Newfoundland. Looks like
| they're about to be clobbered in a few hours.
| danellis wrote:
| I wonder how it would look if the speed of the arrows matched the
| speed of the wind. Perhaps they'd be too slow to be useful when
| zoomed out.
| robertsdionne wrote:
| https://earth.nullschool.net/
| warning26 wrote:
| I love their wind direction and speed visualization -- it does
| such a good job conveying exactly what's happening.
|
| The AQI overlay is really interesting to combine with it, since
| it can give you an idea why certain pockets of air are
| lower/higher quality.
| Englestone wrote:
| So Simple. Brilliant
| mhandley wrote:
| I also really like https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ It's
| not so useful as a forecast, but you can move around the world
| and see everything so well. Take a look at the winds in the
| Southern Ocean for example, and you can see why it's so tough to
| sail there.
| jzwinck wrote:
| I used Windy when planning a bicycle tour. It told me the wind
| would be mostly from the east, so I began my trip in the east and
| enjoyed 1300 km with a tailwind.
|
| The same idea could apply to long distance running or hiking,
| canoeing, and other non-wind sports.
| heroHACK17 wrote:
| Very cool
| spoonjim wrote:
| This looks like the wind hits the West Coast of the United States
| and "turns" southwards. Is that accurate? If so, what causes it
| to do that?
| hugoromano wrote:
| I was paying for it, but didn't renew the subscription, this year
| in 90 days that I needed forecast was way off in 42 of them, and
| trying all their different model offers. Maybe next year I will
| resubscribe, depending how their models forecast over Fall and
| Winter.
| stonkdonk wrote:
| wow Larry looks scary. I would not feel ok if I lived in
| Newfoundland or those French islands.
| [deleted]
| bscphil wrote:
| The wind animation doesn't work at all for me in Firefox (on
| Linux, version 91). I see a few large animation "sheets" where
| the wind is moving in the same direction, depending on where on
| the map I look. Works in Chromium. Anyone else have this problem?
|
| Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/eLyQa6X.jpg
| davidjade wrote:
| Doesn't work for me on Firefox in Windows either. I've tried a
| number of things and it seems it just doesn't work on Firefox
| at all.
| 10GBps wrote:
| Weird. I'm using Firefox 91.0.2 on Ubuntu 20.04 and it works
| fine. Maybe try opening it in a new empty profile and see if it
| works?
| themodelplumber wrote:
| They are running an impressive show all around, check out their
| webcam embeds and API, great for spotting fires and things, plus
| they have their own online community forum. Their mobile app is
| really good too, includes offline map capabilities, and I take it
| on hikes for tracking.
| gennarro wrote:
| Love this site! Saved me a lot of trouble ahead with preparation
| of the last few hurricanes and tropical storms in the NY area!
| cosmotic wrote:
| Posted previously tens of times.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=windy.com
| sealaska wrote:
| Windy is fantastic.
|
| But, I'm curious if there are any apps or weather models that
| give probability distributions? Telling me that it is going to
| blow 10 mph is useful, but telling me, for example, that there is
| a 60% chance that there will be a 10 mph wind and a 40% chance
| that the wind will blow at 15 mph seems more in line with how I
| would naively assume weather forecasting works.
|
| Right now, the ECMWF [0] model in Windy shows 6 mph winds gusting
| to 30 mph for my area (SE Alaska, with lots of mountains and
| fiords, so a area that is gusty and hard to predict by nature).
| It almost feels like they're throwing their hands up in the air
| and admitting that they have no idea what the wind will actually
| do today. Which, is fine, if that's the case.
|
| I just wish consumer weather forecasts did a better job
| communicating probabilities and uncertainties instead of spitting
| out a single value.
|
| [0] https://www.ecmwf.int/
| trishmapow2 wrote:
| Perhaps something like this https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weathe
| r/forecast/multimodelense.... If you check the regular
| forecasts it also has a predictability figure.
| shoyer wrote:
| ECMWF makes probabilistic forecasts, in the form of an ensemble
| of 50 IID examples. So this is mostly matter of Windy figuring
| out how to put that information into their UI.
| aeharding wrote:
| Windy does allow switching between different models, which can
| be helpful to roughly gauge probability. Definitely not perfect
| though. And some of the models are consistently inaccurate for
| specific locations in certain conditions in my experience.
| kilotaras wrote:
| https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/local-weather/uk/london?fore...
| shows 50% and 80% confidence interval as well as median for
| rain and temperature.
| zaik wrote:
| Since the map is using OpenStreetMap data it would be nice if it
| were attributed correctly:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
| ortusdux wrote:
| They have been my preferred weather source for a few years now.
| Forecasting is spotty in my area, but they have a feature where
| you can quickly compare 4 weather models, which tends to give a
| good overview. They also have my favorite android widget.
| sva_ wrote:
| > but they have a feature where you can quickly compare 4
| weather models
|
| meteoblue.com offers 18 models if you click on 'MultiModel'. I
| found them to be very reliable.
|
| windy.com is cool though, respect to the Czech founder
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Luka%C4%8Dovi%C4%8D
| xoelop wrote:
| I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Windguru.cz yet
| chrisco255 wrote:
| What stack is this built on? Love Windy and have used it for
| several years.
| slivanes wrote:
| PHP, Nginx, particles.js
| geuis wrote:
| This page needs some non-scrollable borders for mobile. Once you
| scroll down a bit into the map, it's nearly impossible to get
| back to the browser ui controls
| aeharding wrote:
| windy.com is great for forecasts, but you have to be careful of
| the model used for certain sports. (For example, the NAM model
| can be more accurate for low wind gusts.)
|
| In my spare time over the last couple weeks I've been building a
| PWA for paramotor pilots to better visualize winds aloft:
| https://ppg.report.
|
| Wind modeling - especially for aviation - is really an
| interesting subject. The main API I use at ppg.report is
| https://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/, lots fun to learn about (CIN,
| CAPE, the historical "soundings" manually reported from aircraft
| and balloons, versus the modern ones automatically pulling data
| from commercial flights.)
| capt_skippy wrote:
| I really like Windy's base maps. How did they generate them and
| what's the style?
| RivieraKid wrote:
| They're using Mapy.cz. Same location in Mapy.cz and Google
| Maps:
|
| https://mapy.cz/turisticka?x=14.1857611&y=49.9310438&z=14
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@49.931472,14.185431,14z
| browningstreet wrote:
| This one's new to me. Never heard of it before. Thanks!
| MayorMonty wrote:
| I imagine something like this could be a fantastic tool to teach
| about differential equations and their applications. Just looking
| at you can see specific hallmarks (sources and sinks), and how
| that sort of analysis can have super-cool uses.
|
| Does meterology use differential equations to model wind?
| 35mm wrote:
| Does anyone know what Windy's business model is?
|
| I'm just curious because it's not clear to me.
| sealaska wrote:
| They have a premium subscription with higher-granularity
| forecasts. [0]
|
| [0] https://community.windy.com/topic/11552/we-are-launching-
| win...
| pawelduda wrote:
| My go-to page for checking weather. On windy days I love to open
| it just to see how things look in a broader perspective:D
| fidgetspinner wrote:
| Asa paragliding pilot/speedflyer, I absolutely love this
| app/site. We use it all the time!
| adanto6840 wrote:
| Awesome. Have actually been looking for precisely this kind of
| data for potential use in a game that we're currently developing.
| Thrilled to see what appears to be a solid API too, going to dive
| right in.
|
| One thing I don't see mentioned, or I may just be unfamiliar with
| the terminology (and haven't dug much into the docs yet), is how
| exactly the 'map data' API (ie not the point-location API)
| works/what format the data is returned in, or if it's more
| expected to be used as an "embed".
|
| My ideal, based on our current code/implementation thus far,
| would be to be able to supply a lat/lon coordinate bounding box &
| have it respond with the data in GeoTIFF format with multiple
| bands, one for each "data-set".
|
| If anyone at Windy is here & might potentially be interested in
| discussing our game & the game's use-case for the data, please
| definitely feel free to reach out -- email in profile. :)
| temp8964 wrote:
| Looking at the city Sydney close to the Hurricane, I am really
| confused... LoL.
| mig39 wrote:
| If you're confusing it with the Australian city, you should
| know they're both named after the same person :-)
| ppcdeveloper wrote:
| Good site and app. Been using this for years now and is my goto
| for extreme weather.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I was on a HK island when Mankut hit and Windy was incredible. It
| was much easier to see when what was going to hit than the local
| news. For the village we were staying, the local news said 12
| (noon) was the worst, but it was clear in windy that would be
| hours later. As this thing did a lot of damage, it was kind of
| nice to be able to predict it well.
| Qi_ wrote:
| Runs very smoothly on Safari on iPhone 6S! An impressive job by
| the devs.
| silisili wrote:
| I love Windy. It's great for anyone who goes surf fishing. Helps
| avoid the frustrating days.
| ourguile wrote:
| Absolutely love this site for forecasting weather events in my
| area. Not sure what I would do without it at this point.
| dang wrote:
| Some past threads:
|
| _Live View of Hurricane Laura_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24289287 - Aug 2020 (54
| comments)
|
| _About Windy (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21701065 - Dec 2019 (34
| comments)
|
| _Typhoon Lands in Japan - Windy Storm-Tracking Platform_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21232332 - Oct 2019 (44
| comments)
|
| _How wind and geography influences wildfire smoke_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18416850 - Nov 2018 (6
| comments)
|
| _Windy.com_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15094639 -
| Aug 2017 (103 comments)
| evilpie wrote:
| I have been using the similar site https://www.ventusky.com for a
| few years now.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Shout out for Ventusky. The app is fantastic. Highest value $3
| I spend every year.
| glxxyz wrote:
| Another similar one: https://earth.nullschool.net/
| smalley wrote:
| There's also https://www.predictwind.com/ which is a (very
| expensive) commercial service a lot of boat/yacht folks use for
| planning. I believe they also have some utilities for
| delivering compressed forecast data over satellite link as
| well.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| PredictWind has free tier that displays something like 6
| forecasts on one screen, app or browser. Def my favourite
| software and it's kiwi made!
|
| Their premium tier is for automatic routing and can get
| expensive for budget sailors.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| They look like clones.
|
| What's the difference?
| jonahbenton wrote:
| There are a LOT of weather geeks around the world. Different
| folks, different origin stories.
| tokyokawasemi wrote:
| Earth.nullschool is the original one.
| aeharding wrote:
| Another one: https://www.windfinder.com
| mmaunder wrote:
| Windy is great. The map is appealing, but be sure to check out
| the forecast view for a particular location. Also make sure you
| try different locations. I'm in the Salish Sea on Orcas Island in
| the San Juans and because we have a lot of topography here mixed
| with ocean, we have a lot of local effects, contour winds and so
| on and there are big differences between locations.
|
| Also note that Windy can get it wrong. I grew up in Cape Town and
| forecasting there is easy compared to here because it's the tip
| of Africa surrounded by Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Here it's very
| mixed with land, sea, big 11,000ft mountain ranges like the
| Olympics and so on and this region is hard to forecast. For where
| we are, the forecasts - and Windy's map specifically - is wrong
| fairly often.
|
| A trick that a lot of folks don't know about is using ATIS, AWOS
| or ASOS at a local airport or airfield. If you want to know what
| the weather is at a given location, find a nearby airport, get
| their ATIS (or AWOS or ASOS) phone number and you can call and
| get a real-time report that is extremely accurate. I do this for
| KORS, our local airfield all the time. You can get this data off
| Foreflight although I'm sure there are plenty of free
| alternatives. Obviously it's current weather, not forecast, but
| it's often helpful.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Also note that Windy can get it wrong."
|
| I kind of lost trust in it, when I was in the middle of a
| thunderstorm, yet windy showed me all sunny.
|
| Granted, it was in the alps and forcasting there is hard, but
| it was the current state of things they got wrong.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| You live in a beautiful area. I grew up scouting around
| there...on one trip we were invited to embark & leave Eastsound
| earlier than anticipated because a couple of our members
| decided to "casually" lift some cigars from a store there
| (IIRC). xD Thanks for the ATIS info too. I wonder if it's the
| same type of message I hear on non-noaa VHF from nearby.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Thanks - I'd forgotten about the marine VHF reports. Rarely
| listen to them, and I should. LOL! Trust me Orcas has plenty
| of scandal that's worse than that. I'm sure less than half
| the island has all your social security numbers memorized.
| xxpor wrote:
| If you're in the US, you can get METARs from
| aviationweather.gov:
|
| https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KSEA&format=d...
| joncp wrote:
| Another option is the point forecast from weather.gov. For
| example, here's the forecast for Eastsound:
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=48.6968&lon=-1...
| sealaska wrote:
| When you say Windy can get it wrong, isn't it really the
| underlying forecast models that are wrong?
|
| It's unclear to me if Windy is doing much more than creating a
| great presentation of existing data. Their website does list an
| open ML role, though..
|
| I wonder how much rolling your own weather forecast is
| tantamount to rolling your own crypto??
| yccs27 wrote:
| By default, Windy uses the ECMWF weather model. You can also
| change it to GFS or ICON, which many american forecast
| websites use.
|
| ECMWF, GFS and ICON are made by national/international
| forecasting agencies. IBM also has its own proprietary
| weather forecasting service, notably used by The Weather
| Channel. Other apps mostly use one of these models or
| aggregate predictions from different services (e.g.
| AccuWeather claims to aggregate many different models,
| including those from national agencies around the world)
| jschwartzi wrote:
| The forecasts for the US at forecast.weather.gov are really
| good too. I constantly refer to the hourly precipitation charts
| to figure out how much rain gear I should hike with, and their
| temperature predictions are useful too. Plus if they have any
| warnings or watches it's helpful. It's much better than any of
| the paid services out there.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| Also worth mentioning that Windy provides several different
| forecast models that you can choose between. There are high
| resolution models like NAM, and lower resolution models like
| GFS - toggling between them often gives me a better sense of
| what to expect.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Agreed. It was interesting to see the deltas between the
| models for Hurricane IRA. Was significant 3 days out.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Windy is popular on Guam. Massive storms come through and usually
| demolish a chunk of Taiwan, but rarely do much damage on Guam.
| But it's always close. Windy gives a sense of how much wind we'll
| get with a very fine grain that's quite intuitive.
| rrix2 wrote:
| over the past few years my use of weather apps + forecasting has
| really been improved by reading alongside them the local NWS
| office's "area forecast discussion"which is published multiple
| times a day by the station's meteorologists:
| https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?new&wfo=...
|
| It's really great to be able to contextualize the state of a
| Windy map, for example especially in Seattle where the weather
| patterns are tightly influenced by the Olympic mountains and
| other local conditions which these global maps usually fail to
| capture or express well.
|
| Windy is impressive stuff but _looking_ is half the battle with
| these maps, wind directions and "that weather blob is orange
| right now" only really go so far when your weather area's
| geography isn't simple; in fact, i think that the older static
| Weather Channel style maps which expressed the pressure gradients
| and fronts better and helped you build a model of what the
| weather is doing rather than which way the wind is blowing. (see
| https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/journeynorth.org/images/g...
| for an example)
| rateofclimb wrote:
| Great to see some love for Forecast Discussions! As a pilot,
| and overall outdoor enthusiast I've relied on Forecast
| Discussions for many years. If I may be so bold, my app Deep
| Weather for iOS is designed to be the most convenient and easy-
| to-read source for Forecast Discussions. It's free (with some
| more advanced/optional features requiring a subscription):
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/deep-weather/id528748182
| baxtr wrote:
| Not available in Europe! Too bad
| rateofclimb wrote:
| Yes I'm sorry, Area Forecast Discussions are a product of
| NOAA/National Weather Service in the United States and its
| territories. They do cover a lot of ground from Guam to
| Puerto Rico, the continental US and Alaska, but not Europe.
| c54 wrote:
| Here's the same for the SF Bay area for those interested (took
| some poking around to find it, basically MTR is the
| monterey/bay area weather center so I tweaked the URL params to
| match)
|
| https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?new&wfo=...
| rrix2 wrote:
| Yup! And in general, you can click your location on
| https://www.weather.gov/ 's image map, and it'll redirect you
| to the local office URL which is the same 3 letter code:
| https://www.weather.gov/mtr/ and there is a link to the AFD
| in the "Text Product Selector" on the page!
| ctvo wrote:
| Windy has all of that. A quick glance at the layer menu on the
| right of the map shows how to toggle that and more.
| rrix2 wrote:
| Can you explain how to find the AFDs in Windy's UI? I'm not
| able to find it in the layer menu...
| kposehn wrote:
| Absolutely right about the forecast discussion. I generally
| refer to that first (and even check it regularly throughout the
| day for updates). It is a far better tool for understanding the
| stage of the weather.
|
| The other favorite of mine is the HRRR high-res models. You can
| see a simulated radar map for the next 48 hours:
| https://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/model-guidance-model-parameter.php...
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| There's also MyRadar, but this looks more accurate?
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| This is very cool, I'm guessing that Bismarck, North Dakota is
| the place to be if you are wind farming, looks like a lot of air
| is being funneled past it. Things get interesting around the
| Rocky Mountains in general.
| wayneftw wrote:
| This is also a PWA that you can add to your home screen in iOS
| for a nice full screen view.
| thetimbanks wrote:
| I've been using this for a few years to plan out sailing trips.
| It has been very helpful and accurate to predict wind conditions.
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(page generated 2021-09-10 23:00 UTC)