[HN Gopher] Windy.com
___________________________________________________________________
Windy.com
Author : kaycebasques
Score : 960 points
Date : 2021-09-10 20:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (windy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (windy.com)
| ArlenBales wrote:
| I live north of Sacramento. This summer I found NOAA's GOES-17
| satellite imagery to be the easiest and most accurate method in
| determining where wildfire smoke would move.
| https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...
| b_emery wrote:
| East CONUS makes it look like Texas has terrible air right now:
| https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2...
| andrew_ wrote:
| Been using it for over a year. It's becoming a favorite for Gulf
| of Mexico fisherman. More accurate than Windfinder most of the
| time.
| doyoufeelit wrote:
| Just reading the name of this site makes me want to fart.
| 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.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| Ransomware Protection: How To Keep Yourself Safe From It?:
| https://www.hackerslist.co/ransomware-protection-how-to-keep...
| 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/
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Random observation: nowhere is 60 degrees F.
|
| I'm looking at San Francisco, as well as Portland and Seattle,
| all of which the temperature is right around 60. No matter how
| much I zoom in or out, there are dozens of 59s and 61s, but no
| 60. Curious why. It can't be coincidence based on how many I
| looked at.
| dhon_ wrote:
| 15C is 59F, 16C is 60.8F so I'd say using integer Celcius and
| converting to Fahrenheit
| brantonb wrote:
| My guess is the data is stored in Celsius but displayed in
| Fahrenheit.
|
| 15C = 59F 16C = 60.8F
| mmillin wrote:
| This is likely due to the source data being vended in whole
| number increments in degrees Celsius. Converting between
| Celsius and Fahrenheit using only whole numbers would not allow
| for 60 to show up (it is between 15 and 16 degrees C, which
| would convert to 59 and 61). There was a large story around
| this same issue in the Apple weather app, not showing 69
| degrees F prior to iOS 15.
| kaixi wrote:
| Where does Windy's data come from?
| ghoshbishakh wrote:
| Really helpful in Kolkata , India during Cyclone warnings. I
| monitor it all the time.
| webXL wrote:
| Super cool. Reminds me of https://zoom.earth/
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901252) which was really
| useful recently to gauge wildfire smoke patterns.
| 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.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I attempted to use Windy to judge surfing conditions on Oahu but
| the current conditions and forecast are never accurate. They
| might as well be randomly generated.
| heroHACK17 wrote:
| Very cool
| thecaio wrote:
| Any kite surfers? How have you found Windy for spotting decent
| places to surf? I'm a fan of Windy but sometimes find it a bit
| "lowres" in the sense that it does a good job on translating wind
| direction/force in broader, more general areas while it's hit and
| miss for specific spots (eg beaches or nooks). POVs?
| bujak300 wrote:
| The highest resolution model Arome could help but at that level
| your intuition and experience is essential. BTW The most
| notable kitesurfer would be the founder and CEO of windy.
| mavsman wrote:
| I was really hoping this was https://frida.com/products/windi
| which is life changing.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Is there an API to get high resolution 3D volumetric data of
| storm systems?
| max_ wrote:
| Where can I learn about the most effective algorithms for
| forecasting weather?
| nbombdropper wrote:
| How is something so moronic all the way at the top of HN for
| HOURS. Are you all fucking retards who didn't know where the wind
| goes?
| c0nsumer wrote:
| Their stand-alone map application Windy Maps is pretty darn nice
| too. It's a really nice compliment to OsmAnd and GaiaGPS for
| viewing OSM data, and they've done a good job showing relations
| which helps illustrate cycling and hiking routes.
| 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?
| lbrindze wrote:
| High pressure over the north east pacific combined with the
| Coriolis effect. Also the land sea border has a big influence
| here in this case in particular.
| 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.
| sealaska wrote:
| Are you using a different weather app or website that is more
| accurate?
|
| My understanding is that windy primarily just shows data from
| different forecast models, so isn't your issue really with the
| third-party models, not with Windy's weather client?
| hugoromano wrote:
| My grandfather was a meteorologist (taught me forecast based
| observation and weather station data), and I am also a first
| officer half of the year (as well have education in modelling
| for navigation). This year was rough with modelling. I use
| Windy to validate my forecast and navigation decisions at
| sea. As we sail, anemometer readings are crosscheck with the
| forecast from windy and mine, and windy didn't go well.
| Sometimes paper and pencil do a great job. I started using
| Windy (windyty.com) in 2016, and until 2020 forecast was
| quite good, my takeaway is that maybe Climate Change could
| make the job of weather forecasting much harder.
| bujak300 wrote:
| The weather models themselves are evolving - there was a
| big upgrade of GFS last year for example
| sealaska wrote:
| Huh, fascinating stuff. Do you have any recommended
| resources for anyone looking to learn more about "paper-
| and-pencil" forecasting or marine weather forecasting in
| general?
| 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.
| henriquez wrote:
| Works fine for me in Firefox on Mac.
| mkl wrote:
| And for me in Firefox 91.4.0 on Android.
| datak0w wrote:
| ...and for me, FF 92.0, Ubuntu Linux.
| bscphil wrote:
| Do you happen to be using color management by any chance?
| Believe it or not (because this does seem insane), disabling
| full color management fixed the site for me. That is, I
| changed the setting "gfx.color_management.mode" from 1
| (manage all colors) back to 2, the default (which only
| adjusts the colors of images with tagged color profiles).
|
| It's bonkers, but I think I understand what's happening here,
| actually. Relatively recently, Firefox started color
| correcting the content of <canvas> elements. However, some
| sites will download an image, load it into a canvas created
| in Javascript, and then use the data for some other purpose.
|
| In particular, Windy downloads a bunch of what appears to be
| wind data in the form of false color images like [1][2].
| Presumably they are using this data to generate the wind
| animation on the fly in the browser. However, if they're
| utilizing canvases as part of that process, (my copy of)
| Firefox is changing the colors out from under them as part of
| the color management process. Presumably a large enough
| change in the colors would be enough to break the wind
| display code completely.
|
| [1] https://ims.windy.com/im/v3.0/forecast/ecmwf-
| hres/2021091012...
|
| [2] https://i.imgur.com/z3hQKvs.jpg (backup of [1] in case
| the link dies)
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Seems dangerous that color correction would not just happen
| at the display driver level but would modify the values
| returned by ctx.getImageData. Good fingerprinting technique
| though!
| bscphil wrote:
| I agree, I wish they'd take a different approach.
| 10GBps wrote:
| Interesting. It still works for me even with
| gfx.color_management.mode set to 1. Might be hardware
| differences or maybe desktop (compositing, etc). I'm using
| XFCE defaults.
| bscphil wrote:
| If you don't actually have a profile set, Firefox will
| (in most cases) treat your screen as sRGB, which means
| that the colors won't actually be changed.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Wow. Nice find. I also use a canvas to stitch together
| elevation data encoded as PNGs [1]. Will definitely look
| into this.
|
| The road to bugs is paved with good intentions.
|
| [1] https://miro.medium.com/max/1024/0*zRx4LGdE_sxxRip7.png
| 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?
| bscphil wrote:
| I did end up getting it to work, left a comment here if
| you're interested:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28488599
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Could this be a hardware problem? I've been working on a WebGL
| project and often different graphics cards have different
| precision from 8 to 16 to 128 bits. I've seen similar quirks
| when precision truncates calculations.
|
| Edit: Testing different hardware reminds me of the IE5-8 days.
| Sigh...
| drewg123 wrote:
| Have you tried firefox 92?
|
| It works for me on FreeBSD, running "firefox amd64
| 92.0+build3-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 " in an Ubuntu linux jail.
| 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/
| nharada wrote:
| If you click on a specific location, at the bottom you can
| expand the forecast. Instead of "Basic" select "Wind" which
| will let you see multiple model forecasts. Not exactly a
| probability but you can do some mental ensembling to see if
| models agree or not.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/UezBGqZ
| 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.
| sealaska wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. It sounds like you have a much better
| grasp of these things than I do.
|
| So, when clients like windy forecast "10 knots east gusting
| to 20" for ECMWF, do you know if those numbers are directly
| copied and pasted from the ECMWF model, or do clients take
| the probabilistic forecast model and make some sort of
| average prediction that they display?
|
| I'm very interested in how clients like windy go from a
| probibilistic forecast model to a singular hard number.
| Unless this is something built-in to ECMWF itself.
| transportguy wrote:
| GFS takes a simple average of the ensembles for their avg
| model, I believe. The biggest problem is that you can't use
| statistics like you normally would in meteorology.
| Predictions are actually very good for knowing WHAT happens
| to a weather system, but not WHERE it happens.
|
| I work in the sailing space, so this is what happens there:
|
| A racing offshore sailor would consider a variety of models
| and ensembles. Then they would consider the various
| possibilities for the weather systems and fronts (e.g.
| front crosses your path +/-5% East/West within a +/-3h
| gap). A sailor would then avoid any possible dangerous
| situations, and pick a path that on the most number of
| models gives them an optimal wind.
|
| It is both an art and a science. If you compare the results
| of sailors who compete in offshore competitions (such as
| the Vendee globe), where the boats are all constructed in
| very similar ways, you'll see that the best sailors
| consistently get good results, and that is based on good
| meteorology and a good gain to risk ratio for route choice.
| lbrindze wrote:
| GEFS is the noaa ensemble product. The operational GFS is
| actually just a single deterministic forecast run.
|
| A lot of private providers roll up different agencies
| models to provide their own proper ie tart weather model
| because this is a lot cheaper than running the HPC
| required for most deterministic models.
|
| The most important thing when checking the weather,
| especially with apps like windy, is to compare multiple
| models for your self to see how "stable" the forecasts
| are that day.
| sealaska wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense. I sail in SE Alaska.
|
| You'd be surprised how many people make their living on
| the water up here, but their understanding of forecasting
| seems to amount to "download windy app"!
|
| Anyways, the word ensemble is new vocabulary for me when
| it comes to forecasting - things are making more sense
| knowing what an ensemble is.
| transportguy wrote:
| Ensembles aren't used much outside of competition or
| serious industry... windy/predictwind/CMAP have usually
| more than enough weather for the average boater
| sealaska wrote:
| No argument from me there! But when the forecast
| completely misses in SE Alaska, or one forecast model
| displayed in Windy is way different than others, I
| naturally get curious as to what happened, so have been
| more interested in the nuts and bolts than is probably
| practical.
|
| I'm more comfortable on the water knowing terms like
| ECMFW, myself!
| 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.
| MrOrelliOReilly wrote:
| MeteoSwiss does this both for temperature and precipitation.
| Tends to be the app everyone uses here
| https://www.meteoswiss.admin.ch
| 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.
| yutyut wrote:
| I use Windy fairly regularly for military flight planning. Nice
| tool to get an idea of when to launch to hit a timeline/TOT.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| Good site.
|
| I like to watch the current wind reports.
|
| Add that together with twitter reports and flightradar24 and you
| can actually get some idea what a wildfire is doing. It's an area
| where government and the local news are essentially useless.
| sojournerc wrote:
| Local emergency dispatch can be another great source.
|
| This is a great site for dispatch streams.
|
| They often have ftac channels too where the firefighters will
| be communicating.
|
| https://www.broadcastify.com/
| zaik wrote:
| Since the map is using OpenStreetMap data it would be nice if it
| were attributed correctly:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
| burkaman wrote:
| It's there in the bottom right corner.
| 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
| C19is20 wrote:
| +1 for meteoblue.
| xoelop wrote:
| I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Windguru.cz yet
| zevv wrote:
| What causes this huge plot of very bad air in the middle of
| Russia near 63.597820342465404, 112.49690168386316?
| andai wrote:
| Looks like there are several active wildfires around the area.
|
| https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2021-09-10..2021...
| zevv wrote:
| Right, good catch, thanks!
| 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
| bori5 wrote:
| It's a cool app but I wonder why there's no way to change font
| size, even on iPad when my eyes are waking up or other low light
| situation it can be hard to read the forecast panel in landscape
| mode etc..
| TheSwordsman wrote:
| It'd be cool if you rendered winds aloft, allowing you to change
| altitude to see the wind at that height.
| prawn wrote:
| There appears to be a slider on the right-hand side for this.
| 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.)
| mickael-kerjean wrote:
| windy is absolutely brilliant and has become the first app I
| opened whenever I go sailing (aka almost every week)
| capt_skippy wrote:
| I really like Windy's base maps. How did they generate them and
| what's the style?
| c0nsumer wrote:
| Check out the stand-alone Windy Maps app. It's basically their
| OSM-based map layer, all by itself. It's a decently handy
| lightweight compliment to other heavier OSM tools like OsmAnd
| and GaiaGPS.
| 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
| capt_skippy wrote:
| So pardon my ignorance in all things GIS, but it looks like
| Mapy.cz serves the tiles which are based on OpenStreetMap. On
| that Mapy.cz site, there is no style that is similar to
| Windy. The maps I see are "Basic", "Traffic", "Outdoor", etc.
|
| I'm interested in the grey/outlines basemap like this:
| https://www.windy.com/-Weather-radar-
| radar?radar,50.310,1.15... . The shading around the
| coastlines in particular is exquisite.
|
| How did they generate this grey basemap? Does Mapy.cz offer
| the tools to generate such a map or do they just host the
| tiles?
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Oh, I thought you meant the map which is visible if you
| zoom closer on Windy.
|
| The gray map is probably custom made by Windy.
| jq-r wrote:
| Actually that is an excellent map, thanks!
| 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?
| lbrindze wrote:
| All of the big agency (NWS, ECMWF, ICON, etc.) use physical
| models to create the large gridded forecast products. These
| models work by solving differential equations so your intuition
| here is spot on!
| transportguy wrote:
| yes, but it takes at least a degree to even understand the
| basics
| 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...
| bujak300 wrote:
| The business model is that the founder is co-owner of seznam.cz
| ("czech google/yandex")
| spydx wrote:
| my fav weather website is https://www.yr.no/ the name means very
| light rain.
| 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
| hnburnsy wrote:
| It's like what Weather Underground used to be like.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Reminder that weather forecast apps/websites/anything are pretty
| much all just different UIs for the same underlying global
| forecasting models. With the NOAA's GFS being the most widely
| known one. You can find historic forecasts on NOAA's website
| going decades back.
| 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. :)
| transportguy wrote:
| There are already games that use live wind data (see e.g.
| virtual regatta). They source data directly from NOAA/GFS
| rather than from an aggregator like windy
| 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.
| vmception wrote:
| Now if only they can resist the temptation to not fuck up their
| site with an obligatory unnecessary redesign
|
| Windy's whole value add can be "not WeatherUnderground or
| Darksky"
| ourguile wrote:
| Absolutely love this site for forecasting weather events in my
| area. Not sure what I would do without it at this point.
| santosh898 wrote:
| https://earth.nullschool.net/
| arpa wrote:
| better than windy, ventusky and what have you
| [deleted]
| algo_trader wrote:
| Off topic: I am interested in off-shore solar resources.
|
| Are there raw historic datasets or nice visualization for solar
| irradiation including over seas and oceans ?
| lbrindze wrote:
| You may be interested in era5 data for historical reanalysis.
| This is published by the ECMWF and is available for free. I'm
| pretty sure it has solar irradiance data but I'm not certain.
| You can also get NCAR reanalysis and other model reanalysis
| products through the NWS[2].
|
| For visualizing gridded data products you can use panoply[3].
| If you just care about GRIBS zyGrib works pretty well too.
|
| [1]https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-
| datas... [2]https://www.ready.noaa.gov/archives.php
| [3]https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/
| TrisQuinoline wrote:
| There is a startup in Norway called Glint Solar that may
| help. They serve the floating solar industry with geospatial
| tools and data, both on reservoirs and offshore. If you can
| expand a bit on your questions, there may be more resources
| to point to.
| [deleted]
| andai wrote:
| The ocean waves and ocean currents features are so cool! And
| this thing shows an aurora map! Thanks for sharing.
| 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)
| tunap wrote:
| Even before 2017, I recall reading here about... windy.tv(?) or
| some sort of odd extension. Shortcut has been in my toolbar,
| url updated 1 or 2 x's, since. A great resource when travelling
| by road looking to avoid high winds, rain, sleet & snow.
| 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/
| morganvachon wrote:
| My journey with weather mapping sites went in reverse order
| from this thread: Years ago when I ran a local weather blog I
| discovered the Nullschool site, then a few years later
| VentuSky, then Windy. I don't do the blog anymore but I still
| rely on Windy for visualizing weather conditions.
| 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.
| lbrindze wrote:
| They will sell you an irridium go and distribute data through
| their own email client but you can get all of that through
| Sailmail and using the saildocs email GRIB service for less
| money with a lot more flexibility, also I'm not sure how good
| their support is for using something like PACTOR over HF
| which if you are a licensed HAM is always free.
|
| This stuff really only applies to offshore or other low
| bandwidth connection use cases. When I have decent
| cell/internet it's hard to beat windy's UI.
| csomar wrote:
| The UI for Ventusky is much better too.
| 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.
| minimalist wrote:
| This is correct and it is open souce software unlike the
| commercial derivatives, which do add their own value,
| granted.
| aeharding wrote:
| Another one: https://www.windfinder.com
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| In the future, I really look forward to owning a globe that shows
| time-lapse clouds in very high resolution.
| zhte415 wrote:
| I don't see a reason why this cannot already exist.
| firecall wrote:
| Wow!
|
| Damn, that's a fast site!
|
| It's a amazing!
| Cats_In_Love wrote:
| There is also http://hint.fm/wind/
| elitistphoenix wrote:
| USA only?
| aasasd wrote:
| I occasionally meditated for a bit upon a similar map on Yandex
| Weather--finally understood what the deal with Siberia is. Like,
| in spring it's way below zero around Mongolia, while it's on the
| same latitude as Black Sea where it can already be +20degC. Well,
| turns out I can clearly see warm air moving from the Atlantic
| eastwards--until it hits the Urals and stops, and everything
| beyond that is frozen tundra. Warm air from the Pacific somehow
| barely reaches Siberia, deciding to turn east or west instead.
|
| Really nice to just watch this on the screen in realtime.
|
| Also in the rain map, it's fun to look at huge clouds spanning
| entire Europe. Especially if my city is precisely in a small
| window of clear skies amid the rains.
| vadootv wrote:
| great news feed. https://www.vadoo.tv/
| 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.
| drcoopster wrote:
| You can also get the METAR (observations updated hourly) from
| the Aviation Weather Center:
| https://aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KORS&format=decod...
| rastafang wrote:
| > Windy is great.
|
| I don't like the zooming ratio
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I live less than 3 miles from an airport, but due to
| microclimates the weather is completely different. The NOAA
| does a reasonable job of forecasting my specific area, but most
| weather apps will take the current conditions from the airport,
| which can be off by over 10F in temperature alone.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > , find a nearby airport, get their ATIS (or AWOS or ASOS)
| phone number and you can call and get a real-time report.
| Obviously it's current weather, not forecast, but it's often
| helpful.
|
| The US Government makes both METARs (current report) and TAFs
| (area forecast) available online. You can also get PIREPs
| (pilot reports) if you are interested in the conditions in the
| air.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I use an Android weather widget called Meteogram Pro. It
| supports pulling in and displaying METAR data, among a
| thousand other options.
|
| You can make plots of things like thunderstorm probability,
| thickness and altitude of different cloud layers, azimuth and
| elevation for all planets in the solar system, pollen index,
| tide height, you name it.
| Apotheos wrote:
| Can you let me know which developer it is? There are a few
| with the almost exact same names. Thanks!
| fencepost wrote:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cloud3s
| qua...
|
| There's also a non pro version, but I'm not clear on the
| differences because I still have a decade or more worth
| of the old system credits bought to support what's always
| been a great app/widget.
| aeharding wrote:
| Along with free APIs! (XML, though.)
|
| https://www.aviationweather.gov/dataserver
| 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.
| bujak300 wrote:
| Convective ("heat") thunderstorms are pretty much impossible
| to forecast precisely. On the day of, I'd recommend to use
| the radar, satellite and wind measurement, to get a picture
| what's happening, not the forecast anymore.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Use the radar, satellite and wind measurement"
|
| I did. And they showed me no clouds, rain or wind worth
| mentioning.
| bujak300 wrote:
| If you were in the storm.and the radar didn't show
| anhthing maybe the radar was out of service in that area,
| which is very unusual.
| ISL wrote:
| If you're in the Pacific Northwest, specifically
| Washington/Western Washington, then UW's weather models reach
| much higher spatial resolution than Windy appears to do.
|
| https://a.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/
|
| I recommend starting with the 4km or 1.3km WRF-GFS model and
| looking at something like 3hr Precip.
| 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...
| bujak300 wrote:
| The forecast that worked best for me (at least in summer in
| Europe) was local sailplane text forecast from the respective
| national service. It was an interpretation of the model by a
| very experienced human with a big picture introduction ("this
| front" or that "high pressure area") and also expressed
| uncertainties. They are sometimes behind soft paywalls, though
| (need to register, but its free. There are some weird rules of
| the EU about some weather data - cannot be freely available. I
| don't get it)
| 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??
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Rolling your own weather forecast is more akin to rolling
| your own election forecast (ahem).
|
| Equally dangerous, but not designed to be private and a huge
| different set of risks.
| ehvatum wrote:
| Political motive to change weather forecasts, and weather
| motive to change political forecasts.
|
| Very dangerous.
| transportguy wrote:
| depends what you mean by 'rolling your own weather
| forecast'. If by that you mean you're going to do some
| statistical modelling on ensemble data, you're going to get
| a much better idea of what is likely to happen than you can
| from the average datasets you get on sites like windy
| [deleted]
| 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)
| 123pie123 wrote:
| for people who live in europe, try AROME, it's very limited
| compared to the other models, but it does (IMO) give the
| best forecast.
|
| in my experience AROME tends to forecast on the drier side
| of the weather. Since I'm in the UK I use AROME first and
| flick between ECMWF. (ECMWF tends to forecast on the wetter
| side!!)
|
| for the next hour(s) forcast, I tend to use rain radar -
| windy has this, but it's not the best I use netweather.tv
| (there's many others though)
| aeroman wrote:
| I'll add in a vote for the UK Met Office here too
| (particularly for the UK). AROME is a high resolution
| 'nested' model, where the region of interest is simulated
| at a higher resolution that the (often global) driving
| model. Similar to ICON-D2 (Germany [0])and UKV (UK [1]).
| These will typically produce a better downscale of the
| forecast to a local area.
|
| Their utility depends a bit on what is causing the
| uncertainty in the forecast though. For the mid-
| latitutdes, a lot of the uncertainty comes from timing
| the arrival of a weather system. In these cases, the high
| resolution simulation doesn't help you, as it just
| incorporates the uncertainties of the lower resolution
| driving model.
|
| The ensemble simulations that the weather servies perform
| will help you there, ECMWF has a really nice meteogram
| for individual locations [2].
|
| [0] - https://www.dwd.de/EN/ourservices/nwp_forecast_data
| /nwp_fore...
|
| [1] -
| https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/approach/modelling-
| sys...
|
| [2] - https://apps.ecmwf.int/webapps/opencharts/products/
| openchart...
| easytiger wrote:
| > IBM also has its own proprietary weather forecasting
| service, notably used by The Weather Channel.
|
| Is it not the case that IBM bought the weather channel to
| acquire the technology with no interest in the WC business?
| yccs27 wrote:
| IBM bought The Weather Company, which was the holding
| company of The Weather Channel. The forecasting
| technology is now owned by IBM, which licenses the
| weather data to The Weather Channel.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "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."
|
| To get the phone number: curl -Ls
| https://www.airnav.com/airports/get?s="$1"|sed -n
| '/<TR>.*WX/{s/.*=right>//;s/ .*top>//;s/<.*//p;}'"
|
| For example, Orcas Island curl -Ls
| https://www.airnav.com/airports/get?s=orcas|sed -n
| '/<TR>.*WX/{s/.*=right>//;s/ .*top>//;s/<.*//p;}'
|
| or, without the redirect curl -s
| https://www.airnav.com/airports/KORS|sed -n
| '/<TR.*WX/{s/.*=right>//;s/ .*top>//;s/<.*//p;}'
| davidjade wrote:
| Another thing to consider is the difference between a global
| scale forecast mode (GFS, ECMWF) and a mesoscale model (HRRR,
| NAM, RAP). The later uses a much smaller grid size and can take
| into account terrain. In a place the the San Juan's (and the
| PNW in general), a lot of the weather patterns are coastal
| terrain driven so these models can be much more accurate. They
| catch is, they don't see out of far due to their higher
| computational complexity.
|
| Here is a great resource to read up on the various models
| (there are far more than Windy offers):
| https://luckgrib.com/models/
| 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.
| lr wrote:
| 1000% agree! I sail and Windy is great for an idea of what is
| going to happen, but no substitute for what is actually
| happening on the water, i.e., the fine-tuned weather that is
| necessary to sail a boat. If you want to know a hurricane is
| coming or the potential for a "weather event," then Windy is
| truly your friend. Otherwise, what the OP wrote is totally
| necessary. For sailing, you want to look at lighthouse weather
| data (e.g., NOAA) and the numerous buoy systems (e.g.,
| https://buoybay.noaa.gov/) really are your friend.
| oxml wrote:
| I live a couple islands over from you. As a frequent sailor, I
| use Windy regularly before a race, but it's never completely
| accurate (PredictWind tends to be better). Great for looking at
| general trends and visualizing patterns. This area is tricky --
| lots of microclimates for the reasons you mentioned and it's
| almost impossible for a service like Windy to be completely
| accurate.
| 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.
| kortilla wrote:
| "Straight from the experts at NOAA"... but through a
| platform/app not affiliated with them in any way.
|
| I find apps that use that kind of marketing to make it sound
| like they are associated with the big agency they yank the
| data from to be really sleazy.
| amrangaye wrote:
| I don't see the problem - I didn't read it as "we have NOAA
| experts working for us" but as "we are sharing data from
| the experts at...". I think sleazy is... unkind -
| especially reaching that conclusion from just one line in a
| description.
| 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...
| [deleted]
| 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...
| sammy_rulez wrote:
| According to these data Zhytomyr is the most polluted place in
| Europe... "Zhytomyr is an important economic center in the
| region. Enterprises in the city include glass, metal fabrication,
| electronic devices, screens, fabrics, furniture, shoes and
| others" wikipedia
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| There's also MyRadar, but this looks more accurate?
| yardshop wrote:
| Windy looks great, I will add it to my daily weather websites.
|
| My primary visual weather site is the National Weather Service
| Enhanced Data Display.
|
| https://preview.weather.gov/edd
|
| It's been "* _Experimental*_ " for several years, and the site
| looks kind of dated, but it provides a useful visualization of
| radar, satellite, tropical storms, etc, plus it runs on my old
| PC! =)
|
| I also like the NWS Hourly Graph to give a better idea of for
| example when it's going to start or stop raining or go below
| freezing on a given day.
|
| This is the forecast page for my area:
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=43.7445&lon=-7...
|
| Put in your own zip code, or type in town and state (sorry, just
| US). Then click "Hourly Weather Forecast" below the daily
| descriptions to get this:
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=43.7445&lon=-7...
|
| There's no location picker on that page though.
| 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.
| bujak300 wrote:
| Windy has multiple models which is great to check how reliable
| the forecast is - if they diverge then its a clue. In general,
| the forecasts are great where there is a lot of good input data,
| like in western Europe and around the Alps. In eastern europe and
| on the ocean the forecasts can be way off. This is a risk because
| the pretty graphics and high time resolution somehow associate
| with precise forecasts.
| wayneftw wrote:
| This is also a PWA that you can add to your home screen in iOS
| for a nice full screen view.
| bujak300 wrote:
| On an ipad the app is a usability disaster. On android the app
| is ok but the web version has the new features first anyway
| wayneftw wrote:
| Oh, thanks I only tried it on iPhone.
|
| What is the problem with PWA mode on the iPad?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I wish weather forecasters would be more upfront about the
| accuracy of their forecast.
|
| For example "Our rain/no rain 2 day in advance forecast for
| Seattle was accurate 280 days last year".
|
| If all providers published that, I would be able to get my
| weather from the best forecaster for my area rather than
| guessing.
|
| Bonus points if there is a more scientifically rigorous metric to
| compare by that they all publish.
| 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.
| grapist420 wrote:
| Incredibly petty: after a mobile pan, keep the lengths on the
| arrows pls
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