About Windy (2018)

https://community.windy.com/topic/4/about-windy/6

by ohmyblock • 7 years ago

99 34 7 years ago

community.windy.com

yardie2• 7 years ago

I’ve been using Windyty since it’s launch. As a sailor, the visuals were extremely critical in planning passages. Where we could plan down to the minute of when to make course and sailplan changes.

Now we’re on land and I’ve introduced to it to my colleagues. While I can read weatherfaxes, gribs, and navtexes it would take a full for your average layperson to read and interpret that data. Windy makes it very easy for anyone to conceptualize weather models and create their own predictions.

slowhand09• 7 years ago

"Where we could plan down to the minute of when to make course and sailplan changes."

As a racing sailor I get that you can PLAN when to do these things, but Windy isn't giving you info from models accurate enough for this to be optimal. It just make you feel good and the picture are pretty.

yardie2• 7 years ago

If you have wind, polars, currents, and sea states you should have a good grasp at where you're boat will be and at what time.

Also, the closer you are to your start time the better the model. If I go sailing in the next 30 minutes, the model is really damn accurate.

wefarrell• 7 years ago

This clearly is not sufficient for inland racing but I can absolutely see how it would be for sailing long distances.

However it would be really cool to see something like this at a much more detailed resolution. I've been using this model for currents for the last 14 years: http://hudson.dl.stevens-tech.edu/maritimeforecast/maincontr... It would be more legible if it used windy's visualizations.

nathancahill2• 7 years ago

My go to weather app, along with Dark Sky. Can't say enough good things about it. Constantly updated with new, useful features.

There's something to be said for a software company not taking a ton of VC money, hiring hundreds of people, and shutting down in 3-4 years. From the last photo they have a ~10 person team.

protomikron• 7 years ago

It is indeed a cool project. However I am interested how they make money? Their apps seem to have IAPs, or how does their business-model work?

drej• 7 years ago

The project was started (and still being partly coded by) one of the most successful Czech internet entrepreneurs, currently ~16th wealthiest Czech out there, his fortune estimated at ~$.7bn, so this venture seems to be self funded.

I can dig up an interview I read with him (in Czech), but I can't recall him talking about the financial side of things. He rarely talks to the press, so it's hard to come by this sort of information.

bujak30002• 7 years ago

They crowdsourced something like 500k EUR this year too

fencepost• 7 years ago

If you're on the webpage, under the top left corner hamburger menu the first item is "Donate". Not sure how they've done this year, their goal listed is $550k but for me it shows 0% which I find hard to believe in December. I blame my browser lockdowns.

They also have apps with in-app purchases to donate as well.

My preferred weather widget on Android (Meteogram Pro) links out to Windy if you tap the top center of the widget, it's very handy.

classified• 7 years ago

Very nice. And the name actually fits, which is a rarity in itself.

bujak30002• 7 years ago

Its a tragedy they dropped 3D view. Makes it pretty useless for the area around poles

dmos62• 7 years ago

Do you look up predictions a lot of those areas?

ksec• 7 years ago

Off Topic:

I thought the forum was running on Discourse, but turns out to be something called NodeBB, first time I heard of it, it is similar in design, and I think it felt slightly faster / snapier than Discourse.

RivieraKid3• 7 years ago

The author is also the founder and owner of a local Google-like company (search, email, maps, media, etc.), that's where he gets the funding for Windy.

rplnt• 7 years ago

And their maps are far superior to Google if you are looking for a map experience. I.e. you want to see a map, understand it, use it. With Google you get a grey blob of nothing where you can see a plotted route and reviews for your destination. It's useful, but very different.

chewz• 7 years ago

Indeed. Topographic maps with route planning for cross-country skiing, road biking or mountain biking. (in addition to usual car navigation). Offline capabilities, weather conditions along the route, on-line cameras etc.

https://www.windy.com/maps?map

Doctor_Fegg• 7 years ago

Meanwhile, Windy's maps use OpenStreetMap data, but don't give OSM the required attribution.

That's against OSM's licence and seriously not cool.

cmos• 7 years ago

We use this website in oceanography to understand what kind of weather conditions our buoys are in. Off the coast of greenland this is helpful to shunt the wind turbines in extreme wind - not because they can't handle the wind, but because the waves crash on the spinning blades and shatter them.

Pigo• 7 years ago

Man, the performance is pretty incredible considering what all it's doing. I'm going to try it out on some other devices.

chrismckleroy• 7 years ago

Love Windy. Use it for surf condition predictions. Better than Surfline!

wobblegong• 7 years ago

same, Surfline doesn't have all the spots ;)

dbrgn• 7 years ago

As a paragliding pilot, this is one of the best weather resources for me (along with https://meteo-parapente.com/). Fantastic visualizations, fantastic data sources.

Note: Depending on your region, it might be a good idea to compare forecasts of different weather model. GFS with its 22km resolution is not well-suited for forecasts in the mountains, where the model may completely "overlook" an entire (large) valley. Weather phenomena like the Föhn are also not modelled well. ECMWF with 9km resolution is often better. In the alps, I've had good experience with NEMS (by Meteoblue) as well as COSMO by Meteoswiss (which is not (yet?) available on Windy).

Overview over the prediction models: https://community.windy.com/topic/12/what-source-of-weather-...

amai• 7 years ago

GUI-wise Windy is nice, but for a good forecast I prefer https://www.meteoblue.com, e.g. https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/multimodelense...

Although the wind map of meteoblue looks good, too: https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/windmap/zurich...

GoodOldNe• 7 years ago

Thought for a second someone had posted this on HN: https://fridababy.com/products/windi - Which is a bit of a hack in itself, and one that I'm sure would have generated some interesting responses.

puranjay• 7 years ago

This is just about the most perfect marriage of domain and website I've ever seen.

About Windy (2018)

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