Speaking of weather
 

As most of you know being on the lakes makes you very weather aware. It seems the weather is amplified due to wide open spaces and a lot of activities that depend on the weather, especially ones on the water.

So I've become a weather-holic over the years.

My all time favorite App was by Wunderground because it had several unique features no other apps had. I've tried and bought a whole bunch of them. Many folks with weather stations know about Wunderground because they encouraged uploading your weather station data to them to share. The weather stations often have the hooks built in to upload to Wunderground. They use all these weather stations to build weather models on the weather. They got so good at it that Weather Channel bought Wunderground, then IBM bought the Weather Channel. Since IBM bought them the good weather apps disappeared (many apps used Wunderground free data feed). And some of the better weather apps that do exist want you to pay a subscription, which I refuse to do. But they still are not as good as the old Wunderground Apps.

So I finally gave up on "apps" and just go to Wunderground web site directly. The same exact data that the apps used to have is still available. And over time the web page has become more mobile device friendly. I setup short cuts on my wife's iPhone so she can click them for our MA vs NH weather and get it instantly.

Here is sample link, but it may not be configured for you. You need to hit the "Configure" button and turn on everything.

https://www.wunderground.com/forecas...l/43.63,-71.76

Here is what is unique.

1) "% chance of rain" is useless, completely useless. How much accumulation at what rate and exactly when is what's useful. See the green peak circled below. How sharp that peak is will tell you if roads will wash out AND WHEN.

2) Wind. Wind is everything on the lake. It can tell you the direction graphically as the day progresses. I've seen days that look horrible on a "normal" forecast that turns out the primary wind might be later but a gorgeous morning just before it.

3) Clouds. "partly cloudy", "mostly sunny", again completely useless. You can clearly see a "clear night", when the clear starts and when it ends. See circled section labeled "star gazing". Actually it is not a great star gazing night because it will still be to windy, that evening. Again, you can SEE that. It could be pretty good at 4AM though.

Getting a graphical birds eye view of the clouds, accumulation, wind (with direction) over spans of time all in one view is priceless.

It's also very accurate. I hope they don't start charging for the web site.

Note that you can drag a marker over the graph to see the stats at any point in time. That can be a little fussy to use on the phone.

Watch out there are some howling winds coming starting tonight through tomorrow night. The chart does not show gusts. 25 mph sustained is pretty high.
Look at Monday, pretty interesting weather day for sure. But look, it will probably have a good sunset because the clouds clear out just as it gets dark.

The black vertical line is the current time. The orange vertical line (on 11AM Wednesday) is a marker that you can drag around to get all the numbers for that time.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...7d776d_b_d.jpg

Radar
 

I live in the Midwest until this week and everyone has the NWS.radar on their phones Tornado alley is what we are called . Tells s what’s close and what’s coming. More reliable.

I should stress that Wunderground is the best forecast weather I’ve seen.

I use Storm Radar for in moment tracking of severe storms.
I’m sure there are plenty. I’ve used NOAA occasionally.
But I typically don’t need to track tornadoes or hurricanes in NH.
To be honest I’m typically looking for the GOOD weather.

I assume you mean NOAA Weather Radar App?
I didn't see any NWS.Radar App
But there is a web site run by NOAA called NWS.

?National Weather Service (NWS)Radar radar.weather.gov

I have used wunderground for years and have found it to be very good, probably the best choice of weather services I have run across. It is weak in a couple areas that Intellicast, no longer available, was great in.

First, future radar. Wunderground has it but only for the next 6 hours. Intellicast had it for a day out, which I found VERY useful for planning next day activities. I have found iWeathernet at https://www.iweathernet.com/interactive-radar gives 2 day future radar which I find useful at times.

Second, Intellicast gave very good historical summaries of temperatures by location. I could answer questions like "When is the average nighttime temperature above freezing?" and "When is the record low nighttime temperature above freezing?". I haven't found a good replacement for historical information. You can tease some of it out of wunderground but most services, understandably, are focused on current and predicted weather.

I have a Davis weather station but it is old enough that linking it to wunderground isn't possible. When it is replaced with either a Tempest or another Davis, I will. The only thing I don't like about Tempest is that they don't have a wall unit that displays the information. (Yes, you can check your phone but I like an "at a glance" display.) Their solution for that is to suggest you get a cheap tablet to leave on display, which I agree is a good solution for them but I am not enamoured of.

Did not expect this mornings wind gusts. Forecasts said we are expecting gusts but did not expect these. Will limit what was planned for outside


Sent from my iPhone using Winnipesaukee Forum mobile app

Thanks, msw. Very cool site. Like you, I agree that wind is the single most important forecast. But just to be clear--the Wunderground hourly numbers are the ones used by The Weather Channel, right?

I, too, like the Wunderground graphics for much the same reasons. For me, though, the % chance of rain is quite useful, as it gives me a good sense of timing. For example, a sharp spike in that blue shading at some narrow window in time suggests passage of a front, with an otherwise decent day on either side of it. A broad blue hump would imply a low coming in over a good many hours. The timing of the general ramp-up in % or rapid drop-down tells me if, for example, much of the day will be dry and thus useful for outdoor things before wet weather ends it, or if rain is expected to end early and leave the rest of the day fairly decent. This information on timing lets me plan my days well in advance. But all of that is based on accuracy of the weather models. I like to track how expectations change or don't change over some days in advance of when I hope to be doing something. Consistency in predictions suggests confidence in the model's predictions (this time), whereas frequent changing in expections leads me to think the various models aren't in great agreement. When I see inconsistency for a time of interest to me, I'll look also at NWS or Accuweather for comparison.

I had to double check in case things changes but if you scroll to the bottom of their main page. You can still see logo's for Weather Channel, IBM and Weather Under Ground. Weather Channel existed independently before they acquired WU. So they might use a hybrid of models. Hard to say.

https://www.wunderground.com

I'll keep that in mind. Thx. There is so much information on that chart it's crazy.

For actual sailing I use an app called Windfinder Pro which gives predicted gusts (by the hour). But I tend only bother with that app when I'm actually gonna go sailing.

I just checked it. It still had todays forecast. You can see it predicted 48 mph gusts today. NOT a good sailing day.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...a64860_b_d.jpg