If you're like me and passionate about sailing you obviously chase wind and preferably LOTS of wind. For the majority of us checking wind forecasts becomes a daily routine. You wake up in the morning and consult every forecasts to see if Santa Claus has a big gift for you or maybe just a little one. With the best of your knowledge you analyse the data.
One of the challenge is to minimise the risk of getting a false positive wind forecast and wasting time by getting at the beach for nothing. To accomplish that, a good practise is to compare different forecast models. Usually when the models don't agree with each other it's a bad sign that reduce the probability of getting quality wind.
Checking forecasts for different locations is also something done regularly. Some spots work on really particular conditions that you don't want to miss. Hearing your buddy bragging about "how good the conditions were" the next day is no fun. Depending where you ride, you might also want to check for wave and tide forecasts.
Fortunately we are lucky to have lots of wind forecasts data ready to be consulted in different websites and wind app. But some of these apps show only GFS, it's a good long term forecast but if you count only on this model you might get false positive forecast often. For short term, it's always a good idea to compare with the high resolution forecasts. Some other apps show a mix of forecast models which is even worst because a forecasts mix "recipe" cannot work the same way for every location. Every model accuracy can be different depending on location. Another problem with current forecast websites is the lack of precise hourly data. Some forecasts are showed with a three hour interval which can be insufficient if you want to take a decision about wether an after work session could be worth it or not. An hourly forecast makes it easier to understand the good patterns.
But the main problem I had with all these apps was that it took me so much time to consult everything and have a good understanding of all the forecasts. It became a time consuming task that demotivates me and I end up missing good wind. That's why I decided to built igetwind. I've been a software developper for 20 years and with the quality of the technology available now there is no reason to not have a better website for consulting lots of data in the same page. With iGetwind.com it takes less time to get better quality data for all the wind spot I dream of.
iGetwind is a wind/wave/tide forecast website. It covers any locations on planet earth with different forecast models. Try iGetwind.com
John