Windy.app Weather Hacks video 4: How to use weather stations

The YouTube channel of Windy.app, Weather Hacks (the name speaks for itself), has released its fourth video dedicated to such an important and must-know thing in weather forecasting as weather stations.

In this video from the channel's host and our lead users support specialist, Katerina, you will learn what weather stations are, why they are a good source of information (and why they are not perfect), and how to use such stations in the app. By the way, the app has almost their complete worldwide base of more than 30,000 stations of about 40,000 officials.

As usual, below is a text version of the video, which you can watch directly on this page or go to the channel. In the latter case, don’t forget to subscribe, like and comment. What else do the YouTubers usually say?!

Katerina Melnik, Windy.app Support Lead Manager

— Well, nowadays weather station is a set of automatic sensors to record wind speed, air temperature, humidity, and other weather parameters, and send it directly to the owner via the Internet. The stations are also called "wind meters".

The weather station should be placed in an open area, so it is not influenced by trees, buildings, and other objects so much. It gives you the information about what is happening in the atmosphere in a place where the weather station is located and a certain radius like 10–20 km, it depends on the surroundings.

Why weather stations are great?

First of all, it is as close to reality as it gets. Secondly, it is fresher than the weather forecast because you can see wind speed and wind direction, and other parameters just minutes after it’s been recorded. Thirdly, it is an independent source of weather data.

But I have to mention the downsides of weather stations, too. The main one is that not every outdoor spot has a weather station nearby.

By the way, if you have your personal weather station (yes, they are) at your home or at your spot but you don’t see it in the app, contact Windy.app Support by writing to [email protected] and will make it happen.

How to use weather stations?

Imagine, I’m a kitesurfer and I want to have a good kiting session today. I open my favorite spot or the nearest one to my current location and check the Compare chart.

In the chart, I see that the wind forecast is good for kitesurfing. Now I want to check it against the weather station. And this is what you actually need to do.

What do I see then? The station that’s nearby, it’s just 10 km away from me. It’s been updated 32 minutes ago. The last reported wind is 12 m/s from south-south-west (SSW). So this weather station data match the forecast, which is good.

Then, I open this weather station screen (page) and check the wind for the last few hours. I see the nice strong wind there. The trend is that it is rising. So I have to get going to the spot, so I do not miss these great wind conditions!

The recap

For me, to believe in a forecast, I have to make sure that: 1. The current reading of the weather station corresponds to the forecast and 2. That the trends of the weather station and the forecast are the same. That means that they are both rising or both falling.

If the trends are opposite, you should check other weather stations and/or another weather model, or just trust your intuition, until you find better conditions.

Anyway, there is another tip at the end: add this weather station to your Favorite spots (in the app, weather stations are just another type of spot), so you always have it on the Home screen of your Windy.app. You can also share the station with your friends.

So, will you start using the weather stations now?! Or you are already ahead of us? Let us know by leaving a comment on the YouTube channel Weather Hacks.