Tip #8: Change the look of the wind rose in the Windy.app

Among 100+ Windy.app features, there are always one or two, or even three small ones that you didn't know about, right? Even if you're a true weather and outdoor expert using the app. Meanwhile, these may be small, but important features.

For example, you can change the look of the Wind Rose on the Spot Screen by choosing between two options. Why change the wind rose? So you can know the exact wind speed for a particular hour on a particular day over the whole 10 day forecast, or you can see the pattern of wind behavior for the same period in a more interactive way using the Wind Bar. You can also take a look at the wind history to compare the forecast to the historical data.

Here’s exactly how you can do it:

1. Open your favorite outdoor spot or the nearest one to your current location from the Home Screen of the app or the Weather Map. Let's take fishing spot Ninilchik, Alaska, in the United States as an example.

Wind rose for the Ninilchik, Alaska, USA, fishing spot in the Windy.app for iOS

On the screen of the spot, you can see the wind rose. This is an unusual rose developed in Windy.app. The green arrow shows the wind speed and direction for the hour you have chosen in the forecast table. Note that in this case your selection (table column) is colored in semi-transparent white.

At the time of writing this tip at 11 pm on the 12th of November 2021, the exact wind direction is north-northeast (NNE) or 22.5° with a speed of 4 meters per second.

You can also change the forecast step from one hour to three hours clicking on the "1 h" / "3 h" small icon in the upper left corner of the forecast table.

The blue arrow on the wind rose shows the swell direction, speed, and other parameters. The swell is needed for those who do surfing.

2. To change the wind rose look to a more familiar one, click again on the column in the forecast table that you have selected.

Wind rose for the Ninilchik, Alaska, USA, fishing spot in the Windy.app for iOS

Now you see the standard wind rose for the same hour or a period of three hours on the same day. This rose shows the same thing — wind direction and speed. The difference is that you can tell the wind speed by the color, but you need to look at the table to see the exact data for this type of wind rose.

To figure out what hour during the day you are on, look at the Wind Bar above the table. The dot on it shows the approximate hour or a time interval.

Scroll forward or backward through the bar to see how the wind will change during the day, the coming days, and over the entire 10 day period for which the forecast is available.

Check the forecast from other weather models. The look of the wind rose may change. For example, for the same spot GFS+ weather model shows the same wind direction as GFS27 we used before but the wind speed is much higher, between 7 and 10 m/s.

Compare the forecasts using the Compare Mode on the left of the weather models slider.

Wind rose for the Ninilchik, Alaska, USA, fishing spot in the Windy.app for iOS

3. You can also find the standard wind rose in the Weather History in the app and on this website.

In the app

Scroll down the Spot Screen to the section with the same name. There you can see the wind rose for each month and each day for the last 9 years (2021–2012) in the Detailed Weather Archive subsection.

Wind History in the Windy.app for iOS

For example, on the screenshot below we see that on the same day, November 12 one year ago in the year 2020 the wind was blowing on the same spot in the same NNE direction at 9 pm (in the Weather Archive the forecast step is only available for three hours). But the wind was a little bit weaker, 3.5 meters per second against 4 meters per second in 2021. From this, we can conclude that we can trust the forecast in the table.

In the same way, you can compare the data with 2019, 2018, and other years in the past.

Detailed Wind History in the Windy.app for iOS

On the website

Go the the History / Statistics tab on the spot screen:

Wind History in the Windy.app website

Read all useful tips in the Windy.app blog. You can also find them all on the Tips page in the Support section of the website:

Text: Ivan Kuznetsov, an outdoor journalist, editor and writer from the Dolomites, Italy, and Karelia, Finland, with 10 years of professional experience. His favorite sports are hiking, cycling and sauna. Read his other articles

Cover photo: Jack Murrey / Unsplash