Frequently asked questions
How accurate are the forecasts?
Wind addicted people can discuss this forever :) All the forecasts on windguru are based on data produced by numeric model, please always keep in mind that this website should be used as a friendly and comfortable interface to model data forecasts rather than official forecasts that are never wrong... For some places the forecasts may be perfect for other it may always fail. One of the most important limits is the model resolution, GFS model has a coarse resolution, as a result of this, local effects like thermic winds on Lake Garda for example, or how the local terrain affects wind flows around your spot are not visible to the model. The forecast for two places which are close to each other will be the same or at least similiar. Windguru also offers WRF forecasts which have higher resolution so they should be quite better in this regard.
The other warning is about long term forecasts. GFS forecasts on windguru predict weather for up to 7.5 days to the future. For the first 2 or 3 days the forecast usually works fine but when we go further the reliability goes down, you can see that longer forecasts tend to change with the next model cycle. Perfect 25 knots of wind for the next weekend can vanish during several days... and they do... because Murphy's Laws are better than all the weather models in the world :) Even long term forecasts can be usefull sometimes, but you should at least be ready to face a dissapointment.
How often are the forecasts updated?
If everything goes smooth, forecasts update every 6 hours. Model update schedule (approximate times in UTC):
model cycle: | 00 UTC | 06 UTC | 12 UTC | 18 UTC | |
GFS 50 km (world) | 04:55 UTC | 10:55 UTC | 16:55 UTC | 22:55 UTC | |
NWW3 (waves) | 04:55 UTC | 10:55 UTC | 16:55 UTC | 22:55 UTC | |
WRF 27 km (Europe) | 05:00 UTC | 11:00 UTC | 17:00 UTC | 23:00 UTC | |
WRF 9 km (Europe) | 07:40 UTC | 13:40 UTC | 19:40 UTC | 01:40 UTC | |
WRF 9 km (Canary) | 08:10 UTC | 14:10 UTC | 20:10 UTC | 02:10 UTC | |
WRF 9 km (Egypt) | 07:35 UTC | 13:35 UTC | 19:35 UTC | 01:35 UTC | |
WRF 9 km (South Africa) | 06:15 UTC | 12:15 UTC | 18:15 UTC | 00:15 UTC | |
WRF 12 km (Argentina) | 08:40 UTC | 14:40 UTC | 20:40 UTC | 02:40 UTC | |
WRF 3 km (CZ) | 06:40 UTC | 12:40 UTC | 18:40 UTC | 00:40 UTC | |
WRF 3 km (Gibraltar) | 08:20 UTC | 14:20 UTC | 20:20 UTC | 02:20 UTC | |
NAM 12 km (N.America) | 03:00 UTC | 09:00 UTC | 15:00 UTC | 21:00 UTC | |
NAM 3 km (Hawaii) | 02:15 UTC | 08:15 UTC | 14:15 UTC | 20:15 UTC | |
HRW 5 km (Hawaii) | 04:50 UTC | 16:50 UTC | |||
HRW 5 km (Caribbean) | 10:50 UTC | 22:50 UTC | |||
HRW 4 km (US) | 05:45 UTC | 17:45 UTC |
Why I always see Maui when I enter the site? I want to see spot XY as default.
If you register you can set any default spot using the Forecast sets feature (see Using windguru). If you did this, but still see Maui, check your settings, the set must be marked as default (there is a checkbox for this).
I have lost my password, what can I do?
If you entered some email when registering you can retreive it automatically - after you enter wrong password you will see a link which you can use to send your password to your email. It is strongly recommended to register some email, you don't need to enter any private info but at least the email can be sometimes useful... If you do not have any email in your settings ask me and I will try to help, but note that I will not easily resend PRO users passwords.
I can't login. I am sure I have the right username and password.
Make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser. If you still can't login and you are sure that you have the right username and password then deleting old windguru cookies from your browser should help.
I can't find my spot on the list!
If you think that some major windsurfing / kitesurfing spot is missing, please ask me to add new spots to WindGURU here. I'll try to do my best to add it as fast as possible - please be patient because I am pretty busy ;-) it usually takes days, weeks or months... Do that if you think that other windsurfers may also be interested in this spot. For personal style spots, it's much better to use "Custom spots" instead (see user settings) these are mainly for you - they will not appear on the main "Windguru spots" list, I'm trying to keep the size of the main spot list reasonable.
I'd like to make a link from my website to windguru, is it possible to link directly to particular forecast?
Yes, if you use the right URL than you can link directly to any spot available in the list, you can also set wind units, temperature units and choose hours to be displayed. Use this tool to generate the right link.
Is it possible to display windguru forecast directly on my website?
Yes, it is. You can display up to 72 hour GFS (+NWW3) forecast directly on your website. Read the detailed how-to.
Why register as Windguru user?
After you register and get your username, you'll be able to personalise the forecasts, you can set preferred wind and temperature units, add custom spots, create your personal forecast sets etc... Registering is free. Look at Using windguru for more info about why to register.
The temperature in forecast is too low.
Especially the spots on the islands can display too low daytime temperatures. Normally the temperatures are higher on the land during the day but because the model data do not have enough resolution to see this in exactly the point of the spot, it will rather display an average which is too much influenced by the sea temperature. Relativelly small islands will not be noticed by the model at all. If the spot is on the coast the same effect can appear, especially in summer.
What are the recommended browsers for viewing windguru?
Most modern browsers should display this website correctly. We usually test this site in the current versions of Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. You need to have javascript enabled and if you want to login you need to have cookies enabled as well. This site uses javascript extensively so the best is to use browsers which are fast when running javascript. Firefox 3.5.x and Google Chrome are known to be one of the fastest in this. Opera and Safari are also recommended. Internet Explorer is still the most common browser but definitely not the best, actually it is the worst... ;-) We would definitely recommend to switch to any of the alternatives mentioned earlier, if you really have to use IE then use the latest IE8 or IE7, do not use the outdated IE6 which is a really terrible browser and it will not display windguru correctly. Even IE8 is up to 5x slower in executing javascript than Firefox 3.5 so especially on slower computers some features like displaying spots on google map will be much better in anything else than IE.
Update (21.3.2011): In case you still prefer to use Internet Explorer it's highly recommeded to update to the latest Internet Explorer 9, this seems to be much better and faster compared to previous unusable IE versions.
Windguru website is only optimized for desktop browsers. For mobiles and PDAs please use the WAP2 version instead. It is simple, fast and optimized for small screens.
I am a PRO user but the WRF forecasts still seem to be outdated
The date in the forecast (in the top-left corner of the table) is date of the initial conditions which were used to start the model, it's not time when the forecast was finished or updated. Example: the global GFS model (run by NOAA/NCEP) with 00 UTC initial conditions is finished at about 5:00 UTC, after that we can feed the WRF model with GFS initial data and run it, it then takes time to compute and postprocess the results and only after that we have WRF forecasts. The approximate model update schedule can be seen here on the FAQ page or on the bottom of model description page.
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