Wind Maps and Forecasts

[AlanLichty]

I posted a thread on the Mavic Pilots forum this morning that drone fliers on this forum might find useful so I am cross posting it here as well:

Doing some idle searches on extreme wind conditions in the Columbia River Gorge last night and I stumbled across a wind surfer web site that has active wind conditions all over the place. They have gathered a whole bunch of small weather stations onto their web site so wind surfers could find nice places to play that is also a gold mine for drone pilots who want to know what the conditions are like at least at ground level. This is not going to give you flight conditions 400' in the air but does give a general idea of what to expect in the area you wish to fly. Wind surfers don't care as much about what is going on above their heads while they are playing on the water surface.

I have had a Davis weather station at my house for over a decade and I recall getting an email once from a wind surfer asking if they could tap my Weather Underground feed for their web site but that was quite a few years ago and I never thought about what they did with it until I started looking at the interactive maps on this web site. Sure enough they have my station on their maps as a reference for folks wind surfing on Vancouver Lake.

Wind Finder

The map in this case is centered on the Columbia River Gorge since I fly up there a lot but coverage is quite extensive on their interactive map. I did a quick search but didn't any posts on Mavic Pilots that referenced this web site so I though it might help some folks out.

 

[JimFox]

That's interesting and can be helpful even for Astrophotographers Alan.

It's funny, looking at their Top 21 sites, and the US doesn't even get mentioned until #21. So it appears a lot of non-Americans are using this.

 

[Ken Rennie]

Alan I use Windy which may give you the info you want, but it may be too simple. I used to have access to an App that also gave swell/ wave height, wavelength/ distance between waves and direction. I will have a look and see if I can find it. Hope you are surviving Covid, I have escaped so far unless my infection was too mild that it didn't show or be detected with a kit. Ken

 

[AlanLichty]

Alan I use Windy which may give you the info you want, but it may be too simple. I used to have access to an App that also gave swell/ wave height, wavelength/ distance between waves and direction. I will have a look and see if I can find it. Hope you are surviving Covid, I have escaped so far unless my infection was too mild that it didn't show or be detected with a kit. Ken

I use Windy all the time as well for general weather and wind conditions/forecasts but this gave me current measured ground wind conditions that windy didn't quite nail down as well as I would have liked. I do have the Windy app as well and a Premium subscription. You can never have too much weather data

Covid sucks. I was hoping for a very mild case when I first knew I had it but it still hits with a punch that makes the flu seem tame. According to the info on the Center for Disease Control what I (still) have is in fact a mild case compared to what it can do to someone who never had shots/boosters. I would not encourage anyone to visit our house for a while yet.