whats that wind website again?????

[mtreno]

it was like windsurfer wind watch or something like that. the link i had saved no longer works so i wonder if they changed addresses or something. anybody know what i am talking about?

[JohnMickish]

Well, you can't put links on here but I bet if you did a search for windfinder-mille lacs you will come up with something

[mtreno]

perfect - that was the keyword i needed. thanks mnfishinguy

[JohnMickish]

It's a cool HSOforum. I use it every time I head up to Mille Lacs. I wish they would expand to more cities around here though.

[nater]

How accurate is it though? I been on many weather websites looking for wind forecasts (hour by hour) and its usually not that accurate. Last night for example they mostly said 5-7mph after sunset, on the water dead calm.

[copterjohn]

The wind and weather is an extrapolation from the NWS forecast grid. Basically, pick a gridpoint and it fills in the fields for a given location in a nice graphical format.

You can do a similar function for any city of location in the country. For instance, go to the NWS page at weather dot gov and

then type in the City, State in the dialogue box in the upper left. For instance, Cass Lake, MN.

Now it directs you to the forecast page, and you can see a map of the area and actually slide the location around to a specific lake and click again.

Now scroll down to the lower right and look for "hourly weather graph." It will look something like this. Good for rough planning of wind, temp, rain chance, etc. The "feather" on the wind arrow is the speed. For instance, on this graphic is starts out at SSE at 10 then backs down to ssw at 5 mph toward daybreak, then increases to 15 from the wsw by early Monday. You can check periodically as the model database it pulls from is updated.

[copterjohn]

From the previous post...In a nutshell, if the grid is forecasting very light winds after sunset, the surface wind may indeed be "calm" as the surface winds decouple from upper winds with the loss of daytime heating (mixing). When stronger winds are forecast overnight, it is because the pressure gradient force (pressure change between high and low pressure) is fairly tight and while there may be a windspeed reduction overnight, surface winds will stay up. Any time the wind blows hard from the sse overnight....cowgirls or glittertails asap.

[AWH]

John,

Thanks for posting that information. I often check the National Weather Service HSOforum. But I never knew about that feature. That weather graph for specific locations is definitely a useful tool and one I'll be taking advantage of.

Thanks,

Aaron

[Shawn Kellett]

http://www.lakawa.com/

I used to be a windsurfer until I finally got tired of waiting for the wind.