Ventusky – Weather data visualization

[lllr_finger]

This is a great visualization of free data, although not the first in this style, but it's usefulness in actual forecasting or nowcasting is rather limited.

Interpolation between sparse grid points can result in missing fine details, like the subtle boundaries that kick off the most violent storms in the central Plains.

Limiting to just GFS and GEM make sense from a proof of concept level, however these are long range models that play in the 10-16 day range. GFS in particular uses a 13km spaced grid that isn't convection allowing, meaning it can't model individual storms well. GFS is typically only output every 6 hours as well so it can easily get out of sync on forecasts for the day of.

It would be great to see these types of visualizations incorporate something fast and higher resolution like the HRRR or even one of the NAM/WRF 4km variants, but that is a lot more data than what is currently being ingested.

The best weather information (for US citizens) hands down is still your local NWS office. I'd recommend everyone bookmarking their site and following them on social media.

[tomslavkovsky]

Windytv (http://windytv.com) provides ECMWF 9km global model, NAM 4km for CONUS, NEMS 4km for Europe and also GFS. Info about data sources used at Windytv https://community.windytv.com/topic/12/what-source-of-weathe...

Windytv created new version where you can see fine details for many different overlays.

[galfarragem]

I never found anything better than https://www.windguru.cz/

In my region (Portugal) their predictions regarding rain on 2-3 days are correct enough to make people come and ask me.. and the temperatures are optimized towards 'mildy'. E.g: You see 30C, count with 32-33C; 5C expect 3C. Note that only their GFS 27km model is updated and trustable on free mode.

[morganvachon]

> This is a great visualization of free data, although not the first in this style, but it's usefulness in actual forecasting or nowcasting is rather limited.

Indeed, it reminds me of this, which has been around for years:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...

[alexose]

Will GOES-16 improve the existing models? Or is the plan to create new models? I'm really curious to know how the higher resolution images will be used.

[chakalakasp]

Found the storm chaser!

[davidjgraph]

Very nice, although default of Fahrenheit, really? The date format is ISO rather than US by default. Maybe a master switch [US|Countries in the 21st Century] 8-)

[patatino]

My default was celsius. Firefox, language de

[GrantSolar]

On the topic of localisation, I really love how it has the local names for places (Roma, Bruxelles, etc.)

[hobarrera]

Firefox en english (the default, not en_GB), Celsius by default. (geographically in Argentina).

[tomw2005]

Connected from UK with Chrome, language DE. Celsisus was default.

[lucideer]

If ISO dates is a measure for being in the 21st century, it should probably really be defaulting to Kelvin, no? 8-)

[pawelduda]

Looks very similar to Windytv (https://www.windytv.com/). Are these websites somehow related?

[piokuc]

They are both very similar to https://earth.nullschool.net/ which is open source: https://github.com/cambecc/earth

[tomslavkovsky]

They are not, the only common thing is that they are Czech companies. Windytv provides ECMWF model (for free), which beats Ventusky in big way.

[edouardb]

Totally agree with that !

[hrodriguez]

Does it make sense to anyone that this kind of data should be layered on regular mapping applications (directions, traffic, shops)? Or is it too much?

I like the idea of visiting Google Maps, for example, and being able to toggle snippets of this kind of weather data onto the map itself. Other useful, one-click, toggles could include:

1. Real Estate Listings for a given area

2. Demographics

3. Forecasts & Historical weather info

4. Crime data

5. Local Events

6. Low-bandwidth settings

7. Access to publicly available real-time streaming cameras

[maxerickson]

If you are in the US, you can add a kmz to Google Earth to get some of the weather stuff:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/gis/kmlpage.htm

[knz]

The issue is data accuracy/normalization and availability especially for data sets like crime data and local events.

Real estate would be a little easier via the MLS (I suspect the cost is prohibitive though) and demographic data is easily available.

[jameshart]

Have often wished there was a weather layer on the moving map in my car

[dagw]

While it is undeniably both beautiful and really cool, I've yet to see anything that beats a meteogram[1] when it comes to actually understanding at a glance what the weather is likely to do over the next couple of days.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteogram

[lllr_finger]

Completely agree. The value of being able to compare individual parameters across models over time, especially with an NWS forecast overlaid is tremendous.

If anyone is interested, IEM has a site that is rather easy to use once you find your local station ID and know how to plug it in: http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/~ckarsten/bufkit/image_loader....

[anotheryou]

is there an online source for that? (preferabley with coverage of europe for me)

[sccxy]

Love this kind of weather visualisation.

I'm fan of Windytv. They also offer free API: http://api.windyty.com/

So I made tracker for around the world sailing race (Vendee Globe): https://gis.ee/vg/

It makes so much easier to follow big weather patterns.

[a-ve]

Great website.

On a side note, you can see the Himalayas doing their job: https://www.ventusky.com/?p=32.15;78.51;6&l=pressure

[CalRobert]

Cool! This reminds me a bit of weatherspark, which used to have a fantastic tool for visualizing long term trends. What were the 10th/50th/90th percentile temps for a given day over the last 30 years, etc. I wonder if the data sets here could be used to build something similar.

[superkuh]

Everyone misses weatherspark. It's been a year since they went down and there's still no replacement for their historical weather viewer. I know they decided to stop because their flash based API for the radar map was depreciated but even just the historical and predicted line plots of weather data I'd pay money for.

Ventusky is no weatherspark replacement and I don't think the models they're drawing their data from would work for one.

[dublin]

Sure seems to be a lot of Fahrenhate here... Hey, look at it this way - the more granular Fahrenheit degrees (roughly half (5/9) a Celsius degree) are more useful for determining comfort - including setting a thermostat: I've had a couple of European cars that clearly used degrees Celsius for their setpoint (even if displaying degrees F, usually skipping by twos). Way too often, it simply wasn't possible to set the AC comfortably - it was either too warm or too cool. This matters in Texas...

[xjay]

Related: Site for tracking lightning/thunderstorms [1].

Warning: Sound is on by default. Disable by clicking Sound in the menu on the lower left.

[1] http://blitzortung.org/

[datl25]

This "cyclone bomb" is terrifying https://www.ventusky.com/?p=49.1;-27.3;3&l=pressure&t=201702...

Is it even possible?

[dest]

I would guess it's a standard propagating structure. For other readers: winds at 80km/h rotating with a diameter of ~2000km. Pressure drops at 935hpa in the center

edit: at 10m above the ground. at higher altitudes, it's quite faster and with a different shape

[brockwhittaker]

It's not just possible its very normal. It's called the Icelandic Low.

[mrestko]

Number one criteria I look for in weather sites is that they pin my CPU to 100%.

[TallGuyShort]

You co-locate a lot of other workloads with your novelty weather visualizations, do you?

[philfrasty]

For remote locations I find the NASA worldview pretty accurate for weather predictions. Just came back from the Seychelles, basically any weather forecast was completely off.

Just by looking at the NASA satellite images you could roughly predict the cloud movements for the next day and though next sunshine :)

EDIT: link https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

[opticalflow]

Well, I for one find this pretty cool, especially the part where you can select the altitude. As a licensed remote pilot, this gives me a good idea of winds aloft at-a-glance without having to parse an entire full-briefing with all METARs, PIREPs, AIRMETs, and whatnot. My main question is the "altitude" in this AGL (above ground level) or MSL (mean sea level)?

[CamperBob2]

Looks nice. Lots of gratuitous bouncing when using the scroll wheel to zoom, though (Firefox 48.0, Win7). The effect is somewhat unsettling.

[blondie9x]

Great stuff let's not forget https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...

[rtkwe]

It's very interesting being able to drag the different projections around.

[aneidon]

I'd love this as a live wallpaper. Anyone if there's an easy way to make that happen?

[finid]

Looks far better than Weather.com and accuweather.com

[maxerickson]

I like forecast.weather.gov:

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.6936&lon=-89...

No geoip, but a lot of information, right from the source.

The NWS radar pages are also pretty good (and again straight from the source):

http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=ilx&product=N0R&overl...

There's 4 different display options for each radar, I usually use the simple loop one:

http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar_lite.php?rid=ILX&produc...

They also have regional overview pages:

http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/Conus/centgrtlakes_lite_loop....

Click to zoom to a local radar page.

[omegote]

Just so you know, wind in Spanish is "viento", and "ventusqui" is an informal way to call the wind. So yep, they've copied both the concept AND the name of windytv.

[IgorPartola]

The zoom on this thing is out of control.

[madhorse]

Same, touching the scroll wheel yields unbearable UI confusion for about a minute.