best paid weather site?

[gresh]

Just interested in anybodys experience with paid forecasts. Are they notably more accurate?

I am always suprised at the variations in forcasts and how often they are wrong. Cobs is usually closest but only one day in advance.

[broraboyan]

l think xcweather is just as good as any and also is you have a weather station near by you you can get report every minute...weather watch widget on android google store.

[The Geoff]

In theory, the more computing power they have, the better the results should be, modern forecasting is all about big calculations. MetCheck are pretty good, the Met Office ditto (and hey, you've already paid for that one with your taxes). XC, in my experience, is pretty good for real-time(ish) reports, but the forecasts aren't brilliant.

 

Anything beyond 3 days is getting iffy however many flops you throw at it, it's a law of diminishing returns, for each extra day you try to forecast the more simulations you need to run to get an "average" prediction.

 

You can't beat a Magic Wind Tree

[Maro]

Windguru Pro seems to be pretty spot on most of the time. XC is not great for forecast but I use it to get a general idea of whats going on, I might decide to travel to a different beach to normal if theres wind there.

[gresh]

How come met office will forecast one thing. Then cobs, which is powered by met office, says something different, and usually more accurate, then on the day in question met office change the forecast to pretty much what cobs said... Wtf . It bugs me when I waste holidays cos of a crap forecast. Windguru is usually close so I will try the paid service.

[lucie8uk]

Yeah. WG Pro is ok. Been using it about 4 years. Pretty cheap really and fairly accurate too. WRF9 is the forecast to look at.

[k3tamin]

The forecasts for wind are down to model output data, the model is great for predicting high winds within the troposphere but unfortunately gets a bit more tricky lower down 'or higher resolution' as there are more factors to take into account. All models have their weaknesses and sometimes by looking at a combination of data from met office model and data from other models would give you a better 'guess'

[aevans692]

what is the diff between WRF9 and GFS in wind guru ? I know they are different weather models but what make one better than the other , the often look much the same , but today WRF9 is looking better .. lol . .

[k3tamin]

Not 100% on those models, but can find out for you. Here is a good site with all the models weather model ukmo - europe - surface pressure [base + 6] - weatheronline

I use these but do have a bit of meteorology background

[si-fly]

I really like wind finder pro app / website. The pro gives the more detailed forecast as well as the standard. These detailed forecasts basically compute the forecast for a small area taking into account local hills, sea breeze etc and can vary a lot from the free version! Sometimes there better, sometimes not!

 

http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr108/si-fly/Screenshot_2013-05-05-10-22-11.png

 

I like wind finder as its forecast is pretty good for my local and it shows a graph of actual wind as its linked to a local private weather station.

 

http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr108/si-fly/Screenshot_2013-05-05-10-23-41-1.png

 

If your local the red "gust" line is what you will measure with a meter on the beach, ignore the average blue line!

 

 

Si.

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Edited May 5, 2013 by si-fly

[si-fly]

what is the diff between WRF9 and GFS in wind guru ? I know they are different weather models but what make one better than the other , the often look much the same , but today WRF9 is looking better .. lol . .

 

Just looked at difference in windfinder forecasts should be similar to windguru

 

http://www.windfinder.com/help

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[skidmarks]

they are all shite its predicted weather sometimes its right sometimes its not wind guru pro is usualy shite paid for it one yr that was it the forecasts were better on the free sites

[JeyJey]

windguru is the best and is for free just type into google windguru and spot where you want forecast it works on mobile as well

paid version of windguru doesnt give anything extra

[paulie_amoose]

The free versions forecasts are 12hrs out of date on Windguru. Wind finder super forecast gives similar forecasts to wind guru pro for free (both use the same model) but it is slightly lower resolution with a 12km grid rather than windguru's 9km grid.

 

You don't really need to pay to get a decent forecast but I do like windguru's layout and it covers a huge number of spots. Personally I think it is worth the couple of quid a month..