Weather sites to forget

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
20,311
Location
west Texas
Display Name
Display name:
Dave Taylor
We often post our favorites, how about some we abhor?
This one is not only wrong; it can lead one down the primrose path. Dangerous imo.
Wildly optimistic several times now.
Pretty depiction, seems detailed and a good ways out.
Usairnet
 
I always thought that site looks like it hasn’t been updated since the mid to late 90’s. I never use it.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Usairnet
Click to expand...
When I first discovered this I was in love... I thought, how cool! Then I realized, at least in my experience, that it was about as accurate as a randomly generated computer algorithm.. so I gave up on it

Honestly, you can make a pretty reasonable weather forecast yourself looking at the imagery charts in Foreflight... they give where the high and lows are, winds, temperatures, etc. Lately I've found that my own "I think this will happen" forecast tends to be more or less in line with, and sometimes better, than what the pros tell you

As far as weather sites I hate?
www.weather.com is a total abonimation. The front page is a mess of ads and random articles and the actual weather forecast itself is not laid out in a very detailed or logical manner

In contrast, I prefer wunderground... which has gotten worse lately, but at least the home page of the site gives you a nice visual of your weather
wunderground:
upload_2018-6-25_19-50-31.png


vs. weather.com: (basically some kind of tabloid)
upload_2018-6-25_19-48-10.png
 
Tantalum said:
As far as weather sites I hate?
www.weather.com is a total abonimation. The front page is a mess of ads and random articles and the actual weather forecast itself is not laid out in a very detailed or logical manner

In contrast, I prefer wunderground... which has gotten worse lately, but at least the home page of the site gives you a nice visual of your weather
wunderground:
vs. weather.com: (basically some kind of tabloid)
Click to expand...
I use to love Wunderground until they were bought out by Weather Channel/ weather.com.. Everything seemed to go down hill after the purchase and I have a bad feeling it'll end up with more news stories that I don't care about instead of just weather.
 
JM93 said:
I use to love Wunderground until they were bought out by Weather Channel/ weather.com.. Everything seemed to go down hill after the purchase and I have a bad feeling it'll end up with more news stories that I don't care about instead of just weather
Click to expand...
Well that would explain why wunderground recently became less useful and getting the weather became more tedious. I thought I had read that somewhere, thanks for confirming! I used to love that site. Still pretty good and luckily the app (at least on android / pixel) is still pretty solid, but the site has changed, and not for the better
 
www.Weathermeister.com used to be a go to for me because of its formatting and layout. In its day, it was a good one to quickly get an overview of what's going on.

Now though, many other sites and apps do the same thing, and do it better. And many of the competing apps do the better job at a lower cost or even no cost.
 
Accuweather still kicks nearly everything’s butt for general forecasting locally here. Including NWS. No idea why.

Doesn’t have all of the detail needed for an IMC flight, but works great for nearly everything else.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
We often post our favorites, how about some we abhor?
This one is not only wrong; it can lead one down the primrose path. Dangerous imo.
Wildly optimistic several times now.
Pretty depiction, seems detailed and a good ways out.
Usairnet
Click to expand...
I still like it. It's just a graphical representation of the National Weather Service's GFS MOS Guidance model. Works pretty good around here in CO.
 
weather.com is bad...very bad.

I still use usairnet.com, as it is no less accurate than the TAFs around here. I also use weather.gov

I'm still looking for a good iPhone weather app since they butchered the Storm app with a ridiculous "update" that made the app unusable (it too was bought out by TWC).
 
Storm was great. The replacement is junk, I also deleted it off my phone. I use MyRadar, which is decent. I paid the couple bucks to remove ads, and it works great. Also like Windyty, but it's better on the iPad than the iPhone, as there is so much information to look at.
 
I also used Wunderground heavily, but find it less useful since the buyout. If I'm not mistaken, the online products of Weather.com (including Wunderground) are now owned by IBM (which explains a lot).

It is FAR from being what it once was. You can still get raw model data (which I've used pretty heavily over time), but you really have to look to find it.
 
wsuffa said:
I also used Wunderground heavily, but find it less useful since the buyout. If I'm not mistaken, the online products of Weather.com (including Wunderground) are now owned by IBM (which explains a lot).

It is FAR from being what it once was. You can still get raw model data (which I've used pretty heavily over time), but you really have to look to find it.
Click to expand...

IBM!!!!!???? Owns WU????!!!!
If that's true, kiss WU goodbye. IBM will run it into the ground in no time at all.
 
ejensen said:
I still like it. It's just a graphical representation of the National Weather Service's GFS MOS Guidance model. Works pretty good around here in CO.
Click to expand...

Eric, I have done two trips now where both usairnet and MOS said to expect excellent vfr weather and I barely was able to make the trip in one case and in the other it was silly-far off with undeserved optimism. I forgot to add in MOS to the other source I find I have to ignore.
For eg on my last trip which was into the edges of a tropical storm in the gulf last Wed, on Foreflight I had side-by-side MOS and TAFs which were wildly different - the pessimistic TAF was correct!
I'm glad to hear it is working for some but I have to take usairnet and MOS with huge caution and continue to back up info with multiple sources, taking the most pessimistic to be my guide.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I have to take usairnet and MOS with huge caution and continue to back up info with multiple sources, taking the most pessimistic to be my guide.
Click to expand...
You pretty much have to do that with all forecast products. I find it helpful to read the "Forecast Discussions" from NWS offices where I intend to fly. You'll find they sometimes have to flip a coin between divergent models, and issue broad-brush forecasts. One of the models might be more reliable one week, and another one the next week.

For example, the Phoenix office has this in its Forecast Discussion right now:

... The deterministic GFS remains bullish in advecting moisture north/westward as a weak subtropical disturbance moves out of western Mexico towards south-central Arizona. This solution still remains an outlier, and is likely too aggressive, so for now the official forecast reflects continued dry conditions across most of south-central Arizona. ...​
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Eric, I have done two trips now where both usairnet and MOS said to expect excellent vfr weather and I barely was able to make the trip in one case and in the other it was silly-far off with undeserved optimism. I forgot to add in MOS to the other source I find I have to ignore.
For eg on my last trip which was into the edges of a tropical storm in the gulf last Wed, on Foreflight I had side-by-side MOS and TAFs which were wildly different - the pessimistic TAF was correct!
I'm glad to hear it is working for some but I have to take usairnet and MOS with huge caution and continue to back up info with multiple sources, taking the most pessimistic to be my guide.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I like the NWS-ADDS site plus the local office ground forecast narratives. Also use Unisys weather pages. And wake up and look out the window.
https://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/
http://weather.unisys.com/forecasts?source=7
 
I think accuweather uses it’s own models, I use it and usairnet and others and aggregate the forecasts. I could care less about how pretty the website is.
I agree underground is gone downhill.
 
Oh. Can’t forget the WTForecast app with the naughty filter turned all the way off.

That’s real weather forecasting right there. LOL.

No, I’m not posting a screenshot.
 
denverpilot said:
Oh. Can’t forget the WTForecast app with the naughty filter turned all the way off.

That’s real weather forecasting right there. LOL.

No, I’m not posting a screenshot.
Click to expand...

Oh ok, I’ll post a rather benign one...

Best. Weather. App. Ever.

200ea205de3d59c509594ce35de5f020.jpg
 
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