An accurate wind prediction is worth a lot. Like most of you we need to schedule our kiting to make it fit in our busy agenda’s. So it is important to know the pro’s and cons of the (free) apps and websites with wind forecasts. To our surprise they can be so good they match that of the paid pro account. But some sites just give you a fraction of the possibilities. Often to seduce you to get a paid account. Our advice? Ditch some of the many wind prediction apps and sites and just take one. The right one.
Best free wind predictions
Lets make a difficult subject a lot easier. So yes, it is quite difficult to understand how a wind forecast is created. But it is easy to comprehend that a website that limits the amount of models and the update frequency is less attractive over one that offers more models and doesn’t limit its updates. That is why we made a survey on 4 different kitespots over the world and compared 7 different websites or apps.
The differences between the websites are stunning. Some just provide one model which is updated only twice a day. While others (Windguru for example) provide up to 14 models for one location which are updated up to 8 times a day. For free.
Basic knowledge; km’s, update frequency and origin of model
It doesn’t take long until you realise that models with a high resolutions (recognizable by the number before “km”) are generally more accurate. 5 Km or less is a very good sign. If such a prediction has a high update frequency it becomes even better. By the way this update frequency can be influenced by both the website and the model.
Another added value is related to the location of the meteorological institute. Those local fabricated models (for western Europe for example the German made ICON, Dutch Harmonie and French Arome) tend to be better compared to models which are made on the other side of the world (in this case for example the Australian Zephr).
What is wrong with windy.app and Wisuki?
Simple; the better models are only available at the paid account. These applications are only useful if you try to figure out if you can kite next week. But they are far less accurate for roughly the next 48hrs compared to a lot of other models.
Windy is not Windy
Windy.com is not the same as Windy.app. And the Windy.app desktop version has less over the app. Still the app version is just showing a very limited amount of prediction models. Windy.com is compared to Predictwind and Windguru.
Windguru pro; worth the money?
Our biggest surprise; the free version of Windguru is just as accurate as the pro version. It provides the same amount of models and are updated simultaneously with the pro version. The only relevant difference is that the free version offers this only for all major (and less major) kite spots. Just a few adds to swallow and you can plan you agenda perfectly and spent the money on kite gear (although just a leash or a knife).
So let’s give some space for the man behind Windguru -who gives us so much for free- to seduce us into a paid Windguru Pro account…
`There are differences 😉 described here: https://www.