Soaringmeteo - Meteorology for soaring pilots

Soaringmeteo

Welcome to the Soaringmeteo main page

Have a look at our free weather models to predict thermal soaring flight conditions (e.g. for paragliders, sailplane and hangliders). Find out by a glance at the map where and when are the best conditions based on the thermals velocity and the wind speed and direction. There are several types of forecast:

There are also many original documents to understand the weather conditions and the use of the tools in this website. The concept of convective boundary layer, also called diurnal planetary boundary layer is extensively used (often not taught in pilot training courses).

The page soarV2 is a new user interface to browse the forecasts of both models, soarGFS and soarWRF. It is an open-source project, your feedback and contributions are welcome on the GitHub repository. See also the soarV2 documentation in PDF format.

1 : Global Forecast System
2 : Weather Research & Forecasting Model

News

2024-03-03

soarV2 is available in several languages

We have just published the French version of soarV2, and translations in more languages are ongoing. Select the language by clicking to the Settings from the main menu. We are looking for volunteers to contribute translations in more languages (German, Italian, etc.).

We also published a PDF documentation for soarV2.

2023-11-15

The high-resolution forecast for the Alps are available in soarV2

It is now possible to browse the results of the WRF model (2 km resolution) for the Alps in soarV2. The main advantage of soarV2 is that it shows a lot more points than the original tool soarWRF. Feel free to give us your feedback!

2023-10-01

One-off request for donations

We would like to increase by an order of magnitude the number of points shown in our alpine high-resolution forecast (soarWRF). Our lead developer needs your support to fund this major improvement. Learn more and support.

2023-04-26

Review 2022

  • soarWRF
    • Added 86 WRF points
    • Display time according to the user’s timezone in addition to UTC
    • Added thermal velocity to the WRF meteograms
  • soarV2
    • Added a map layer “thermal velocity” showing the average velocity of thermal updrafts, and added the thermal velocity to the GFS meteograms as well
    • Added a map layer “convective clouds” showing the presence and depth of cumulus clouds
    • Made sounding diagrams responsive to the user’s window size, expandable, and improved the rendering
    • Embedded help in the website (instead of hosting it on a separate website)
    • Added the possibility to display numerical values for the wind speed instead of barbs only
    • Various user experience improvements and bugfixes
  • Other
    • Set up Plausible for the analytics (instead of Google Analytics)
    • Infrastructure improvements
    • The CSM financial accounts have been published - thanks for your donations
2023-01-22

soaringmeteo.org

Since the 1st february 2023, the main address of soaringmeteo is https://soaringmeteo.org. Any other address won't work anymore. Especially, the .ch version of this domain no longer works and is not associated with our service. Please update your links and favorites.

2021-05-15

New version of Soaringmeteo available for testing

We are currently working on a new version of Soaringmeteo, which should be easier to maintain and evolve. It does not yet support all the features of the current version of Soaringmeteo, but it provides a higher resolution for long term GFS forecasts. This new version will be progressively improved until it includes all the current features.

We encourage you to try it here: soarwrf1.soaringmeteo.org/v2. You can also follow and contribute to its development here: github.com/soaringmeteo/soaringmeteo.

2021-03-10

Temporary fallback to OSM map background

Due to the fire which impacted an OVH datacenter, we have to switch back to the standard OpenStreetMap tiles. The Soaringmeteo map background will be back in a few days.

2020-03-18

New map background

In order to move away from GoogleMaps we have designed a new map design based on OpenStreetMap data. When finalized, the map design will be opensourced.

2020-03-13

Review 2019

  • Preparation for the change to OSM mapping
  • Several GFS and WRF points were added on request
  • Infrastructure improvements
  • The CSM financial accounts have been published - thanks for your donations
2018-09-15

New website: Faster and designed for mobile and desktop users

If you have any issues with the new website, please contact us!

2018-04-27

2018 Spring news for soarWRF

  • WRF forecasts are now available for 2 days in advance, along with the preceding day
  • Improvement of calculations when snow is present
  • Addition of several new measurement points, on request from donors.
  • Updated the mathematical weather model (2017 instead of 2012)
  • Published the 2017 CSM financial accounts
2018-04-09

Retrospective 2017

Your donations helped to pay for the costs of running the servers, it is appreciated!

Although most of the changes on 2017 has no visible effect, a major effort went into reinstalling servers, improving source quality and use of a version control system, etc. This changes make the long term stability better and improve the capactity to make controlled updates.

Thanks in advance for considering providing financial support this year too!

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Donate via bank in Switzerland

CSM – Club Soaringmeteo
CH-1867 Ollon

IBAN:
CH10 0024 3243 2069 1401 P
Feedback/contact

Copyright 2021, Soaringmeteo - All rights reserved. / The forecasts and the documents on this site are free for personal use but not commercial use nor their changing (including headers) before distribution or their intellectual ownership changing. / Visitors to this website use information at their own risk: the author of this site can not be held responsible for injuries or damages whatsoever due to information published on this site.