Animated interactive wind forecast chart

[Zzz]

http://hint.fm/wind/

Captivating to watch. *A note of caution: The drawing functions used on this are not cleaned up by its own code, so after a while it will begin to hammer your machine by taking up a lot of memory. If you notice slowness, just close the tab or refresh it. It is by all means safe, just a memory hog after it draws thousands of lines on the canvas.

The wind map is a personal art project, not associated with any company. We've done our best to make this as accurate as possible, but can't make any guarantees about the correctness of the data or our software. Please do not use the map or its data to fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wildfires

If the map is missing or seems slow, we recommend the latest Chrome browser.

Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. These are near-term forecasts, revised once per hour. So what you're seeing is a living portrait. (See the NDFD site for precise details; our timestamp shows time of download.) And for those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum speed may occur over lakes or just offshore.

[TomD]

VERY Cool !!

I would love to see the map for 4/3 when the tornadoes hit Dallas

[Zzz]

So what's going on 4˚ north of Denver?

[mountainmatt]

So what's going on 4˚ north of Denver?

Wyoming

[porterjet]

I was wondering the same thing. It looks like wind is flowing into Wyoming but nothing is leaving.....So maybe Wyoming is the ....hole of the US, not Oklahoma.

[hicountry]

Notice....the two highest winds are in Wyoming and the panhandle of Nebraska.

[58Skylane]

That's one of the coolest things I've seen! Thanks for that find, Zman!

[robw56]

Notice....the two highest winds are in Wyoming and the panhandle of Nebraska.

Man I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore! It really screws up a lot of good flying days out there.

[58Skylane]

Notice....the two highest winds are in Wyoming and the panhandle of Nebraska.

Man I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore! It really screws up a lot of good flying days out there.

And truckin, too! I don't know how many times I've awaken to crystal clear sky's and thinking "awe man, this is going to be a beautiful day to truck across WY or NE". But just to find out that I'd be fighting to keep my rig in the lane and not tipping over for the next 600 miles

[RanchPilot]

That's incredible! Don't let the map fool you, though, I've gotten to fly every single morning this week--even in windy southwestern Wyoming.

Constant 20 mph winds do a pretty good job of guaranteeing us 300 days of sunshine a year, and they have a commendable culling effect on the population.

[robw56]

Notice....the two highest winds are in Wyoming and the panhandle of Nebraska.

Man I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore! It really screws up a lot of good flying days out there.

And truckin, too! I don't know how many times I've awaken to crystal clear sky's and thinking "awe man, this is going to be a beautiful day to truck across WY or NE". But just to find out that I'd be fighting to keep my rig in the lane and not tipping over for the next 600 miles

That's no joke. When I moved to Wyoming in November of 2006 I counted 14 semi trucks on there sides as I was driving east on I-80. I never knew that was such a big problem for truckers until then.

[DavidB.]

I like that a lot. If it was superimposed over Google earth, I would love it.
Great find, thanks.

D.

[Noe Flightrisk]

A couple of very interesting questions were asked: "what's going on in Wyoming?", and "It looks like wind is flowing into Wyoming but nothing is leaving."

The map shows surface winds, which are presently converging into a north-south trough and then northward into a pair of lows along the eastern border of Wyoming and Montana. As the air at lower altitudes converges into the area of low pressure, it rises into the upper atmosphere, then diverges. Since we can't see the rise and upper divergence, it looks like the nothing is leaving. The resulting lifting action causes adiabatic cooling, which results in clouds associated with the low. As expected, satellite imagery currently shows clouds around the two lows at the northern end of the trough due to the uplift. While all pilots are taught that Coriolis forces exactly balance the pressure forces thus causing the air to flow parallel to the lines of equal pressure (geostrophic wind), rather than flowing into a low or out of a high, this ideal only occurs at middle altitudes (around FL100 to FL180) and away from the equator and poles. Frictional forces cause the surface wind to be driven more strongly toward the low, with only some Coriolis-induced curvature, as can be seen in Montana right now.

Here is a good illustration of convergence and divergence at highs and lows (see the bottom two illustrations in section 1.13):
http://flysafe.raa.asn.au/meteorology/s ... onvergence