When to fly?

I’ve spent most of my life doing things that are weather dependant (Flying fixed wing [prop/jet], gliding, paragliding, parachuting [base jumping too], ballooning, sailing, skiing, hiking) and, despite the increased computing power available to weather modellers and forecasting since the 60s when I first flew, forecasts remain a joke.

Whichever tool you use, look at the weather for seven days ahead, then each day use that same tool to look at the same day as it approaches, take screen grabs of each forecast and see how they vary.

For a paragliding website I once did this and for where I was going to go (South Wales) it forecast a low pressure smack over the Black Mountains. Over the next 7 days the location of the low moved further NE each day until on the actual day it was over Finland.

The original forecast was kind of right … but it was the subsequent low that was over South Wales, not the one they forecast.

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