Windy (the app) in Puget Sound

I've been using the Windy app for about a month now. I thought I liked it. The pictures are great and it appeared to be accurate.

Now I'm not so sure...

I woke up the other day at Elliott Bay Marina. There was a stiff Southerly coming across Elliott Bay. I could see white caps and it felt like fall. I opened Windy and it said 12kts for Elliott Bay and pretty much the whole area.

This seemed light so I checked the NOAA West Point Buoy. This was reading 18 with gusts to 20 which was more consistent with what I was observing.

I went back to Windy...still 12. Stayed at 12 the whole morning till things calmed down.

Another odd observance is when you have Windy show the weather stations they use they don't appear to even be using West Point. This seems odd. Do they use NOAA stations?

We're not talking life or death here. I would have gone out either way, but there's a difference between 12 and 20. One requires a lot more holding on.

Any knowledge or opinions about Windy would be appreciated.

Louis

Real time temp and wind from WA state ferries

We also like Windy and do check it against other sources. I thought it was fairy accurate but will start paying more attention.

There are weather stations on the ferries that show temp and wind on the various routes. Washington State Ferry Weather

In this area I find it is fairly accurate in open water, but it doesn't take into account the land masses very well. It reads high where a land mass is giving protection and low where the wind gets funnelled.

What elevation did you have it set at?


I've done that by mistake.

Keep in mind that Windy is just displaying the information from different weather models. As such, Windy will only be as accurate as the model used. I generally find that ECWMF is the most accurate in this area. However, there are times when all the models get it wrong. The Puget Sound is a relatively complex system for weather, particularly anywhere near the convergence zone.

Subscribed. Great tool but big difference between 12kts and 20kts.

It was set to "Surface". Good to know though. There are a lot of knobs on this app.

Like Dave, we use the ECWMF on Windy by default. We have found it more accurate than the other models on Windy, but we use it mostly in the Strait and Islands, north. Paradice showed us Windy a couple of years ago, and we have no found anything we like better.

Watching closely now, as we hope to leave for the outside of Vancouver Island on Saturday morning...

I have windy and PredictWind . I find PredictWind to be the more accurate Of the two for the PNW. It might be the opposite in other parts of the country. I will need more time with both of them to see if one is consistently better.

All of the models have their moments. Last Saturday they all said <10kn, so I set off for the Wide Bay Bar, which can be treacherous in strong winds. Right from 5am I had 20kn, and it increased to 30kn for a while in the middle of the day. No land effects, I was 10nm offshore! The updated forecasts during the day still all said <10kn. This was from Windy, Predict Wind and Seabreeze.

Fortunately by late afternoon, when I crossed the bar, the wind had eased to 15kn and seas had abated somewhat from earlier in the day. The bar ended up being pretty good, maximum swell was about 1.5m.

Remember that the forecasts are all made from rooms that have all the windows closed. If you want to know what its really like, open the pilothouse door and step outside!