Surf forecasting is increasingly popular. Nowadays, several websites and smartphone apps promise the perfect wave and wind prediction. A surf report is no longer a secret formula - it is a industry standard.
The question is: how do you deliver data? With numbers, colors, and arrows, or with innovative 3D maps? WindyTy, a wind map and weather forecast system for surfers, kitesurfers, windsurfers, sailors and pilots, believes it offers the right tool.
The WindyTy website displays the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) model in high-resolution, but it also features the Global Forecast System (GFS), the North American Mesoscale Forecast System (NAM), and the NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS).
"We do not combine them; we display them separately. In detail forecast, we use Services of Meteoblue, but in the future, we want to utilize our data from ECMWF," explains Tomáš Slavkovský, project manager at WindyTy.
The forecasting tool has everything you need to know before hitting the surf: wind speed and direction, wave height, swell period, cloud cover details, humidity, rain and snow data.
"Major wind forecasting services for kiters and sailors rely on GFS as the only global model. And that is the reason why they fail so often," notes Ivo Lukacovic, a wind addict and the founder of WindyTy.
The team behind WindyTy promises that both the desktop tool and the Android/iOS apps will be "free, lightweight and fast, despite the considerable data acquisition costs of the ECMWF model."
