• The Shot You’ll Never Forget Giveaway - Enter To Win A Barrel From Rifle Barrel Blanks!

    Tell us about the best or most memorable shot you’ve ever taken. Contest ends June 13th and remember: subscribe for a better chance of winning!

    Join contest Subscribe

Wind forecasting/conditions resource - for wildfire migration

Sieg

Major Hide Member
Full Member
Minuteman
Jun 14, 2018
1,967
5,889
I'm looking a for a solid wind reporting/predicting resource due to numerous conflicting wind reports verses actual observations when trying to determine wildfire spread direction and speed related to preparation and evacuation.

This fire is 0% contained and has or is potentially impacting many longtime friends properties.

Screenshot (224).png


I have yet to find a weather resource or local news channel who's reports match on the ground observed conditions. I have a couple wind ribbons out back and a view of an airport wind sock that I monitor all through the day...... my data and my friends a couple miles to the east seldom compare with the 'normal' reporting sources.

Any resource insight would be greatly appreciated.

This is a panoramic west to north view about 10 miles west of the fire zone.
i-jQDQVZH-XL.jpg


This is the current evacuation zoning.
i-D2qPHKc-XL.jpg
 
You might try Wunderground.
It uses Accuweather stations that people put up at their places then register them with Accuweather.
It is some kind of an App thingee that goes on your cellphone.
I am not worth a shit at it but my Squaw can do it real well.
You put in the general area you are interested in and can zoom in or out to catch stations around it.
There are 3 or 4 stations in my little town and I can check each one or go to towns around me and see what they have as well.
They give wind speed, direction, temp, precip., a lot of stuff at each location.
I use it to check conditions at the farm 60 miles away instead of calling my neighbor and bothering him, I check his station.

I really do like Lowlights thing and it may be superior. I will be delving into that for sure.

timesublime's thing look good too. I will be checking that out as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: oneshot86
I would guess that if you are looking at Wunderground and checking stations there that if the fire got to that station it would go off line so you could kind of track progression of a fire that way.
Those stations are very local. Fire gets them, they are out and not entering data to that system.
 
i use weather underground also, and dont forget about noaa
I typically use NOAA website on the laptop and an NOAA based app on my phone that's above average for a phone app IMO.

The wind readings just don't jive with my location.... more generic and based off the airport instruments about 8 miles away. I'm located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley and slightly around the end of the mountain range, then to the east there are two converging valleys that feed weather in my direction. It gets tricky determining potential wind and rainfall at times.

The Ventusky website maps look promising in determining the primary influencers.

Here's the valleys that influence my zone, the fire is to the east from Vida to Rainbow and potentially migrating NW and SW based on evacuation levels.

Screenshot (225)_LI.jpg
 
Sail Flow and Windy are also decent apps for wind. Windy is like the one Frank posted with a live map.

Sailflow has data from several weather stations and the predictions seem pretty accurate. The map shows the actual weather station location that you can pull from. I use them for fishing offshore and our local islands, and for the most part they are really accurate.