User manual
Use the map to see where the air is working at a forecast hour, how high it goes and where cumulus will form. Tap a spot for its values from the ground up, then open its meteogram to see how the soaring day develops. The screenshots are real examples from the Alps; they show a past forecast and are here to explain the controls.
01 / Map
The map shows one forecast hour; the Map menu chooses what: the lift at a height, the ceiling, the LCL or the surface wind. Use it to compare areas and plan where to go. Click or tap a spot for its point readout, double-click or double-tap for its meteogram.
Use Units below the search box to change the numbers shown across the site. Metric uses metres for height, m/s for lift, km/h for wind and °C for temperature. Imperial uses feet, knots and °F, as on many varios. The selected forecast hour and height do not change when you switch units, and your choice is remembered next time.
Use Time beside Units to choose the clock used for forecast labels. Local follows your device’s time zone; UTC is the clock used in aviation briefings and flight plans. Switching changes the displayed hour on the map, point readout and meteogram, but keeps the same forecast moment; your choice is remembered.
The hour and height belong together: changing either can change the picture. An area that works well at 1000 m AGL at 14:00 may be weak lower down or later in the day, so step through both before you plan a task.
Click or tap a map location to open this card. It shows the forecast at that spot from low down to high up. Moving the pointer alone does not open it; close it with ×.
The first lines show surface wind and gusts, the ground elevation (MSL), the forecast thermal top and the ceiling, each in AGL and MSL. The table then splits the lift into its parts at each height AGL, with the matching MSL altitude so you can compare it with airspace limits. A dash means no data, not zero.
02 / Lift
The forecast has two sources of lift for each place, hour and height. The point readout shows both; the map colors show the two added together, called Netto.
Warm air breaks away from the ground and rises; you circle in it to climb. Thermals drift with the wind, and blue thermals work without any cumulus to mark them.
Sunshine, cloud shade, wind and the type of ground make thermals vary through the day and over short distances. The red areas show where thermals do most of the work in the forecast, not the exact position of a single thermal.
Wind blowing onto a slope is pushed upward on the windward side, and you can soar along the ridge in it. Behind the ridge, descending air brings sink, turbulence and possibly rotor. The same slope can work very differently when the wind changes direction or strength.
Green means ridge or wave lift does most of the work. Blue means sinking air overall; expect it in the lee, but it can appear elsewhere too.
In stable air with strong enough wind, the airflow keeps rising and falling in broad waves downwind of high terrain. Bands of lift and sink can repeat well beyond the ridge. Lenticular clouds often mark a wave, but waves can exist without them.
The orographic forecast includes wave at the selected height. Check several heights: the wave higher up can be very different from what you find close to the ground.
Conceptual pictures only. Actual lift, sink and cloud positions can differ from the forecast.
03 / Reading the colors
The map colors show the overall rising or sinking air at the selected time and height. Where the air is rising, the color tells you which kind of lift does more of the work.
Usable lift, mainly from ridge or wave rather than thermals. Darker green means stronger lift.
Usable lift, mainly thermal (at least as strong as the ridge or wave part). Darker red means stronger lift.
Sinking air overall. Darker blue means stronger sink; plan to cross it quickly.
Little or no lift forecast at that height, or no lift data for that area and hour. Tap a point for detail.
The numbers beside the color chips are vertical air speed. In Metric, m/s means metres per second; in Imperial, lift is shown in knots. The colors show how the air moves (netto), not your climb rate: your glider sinks too, typically about 0.6–1 m/s while circling, so subtract that for the climb you can expect on the vario.
The Ceiling & LCL entries of the Map menu replace the lift colors with a height:
Heights are painted on a smooth, fixed scale from blue at the ground through green and yellow to red at the top of the range: 3000 m for the ceiling above ground, 5000 m for the maps above sea level; higher stays red. The scale never rescales, so after a few days you read a map at a glance: on the AGL map yellow-green is about 1500 m, red 3000 m and more. The legend shows the scale in your units.
Where the forecast has learned that the ground heats better than its surroundings, such as a sunny rocky slope, the thermals there are a little warmer and reach a little higher. The thermal top and the ceiling include that, most on weak days, hardly on hot ones.
04 / Resolution
The map legend states the approximate size of its finest colored detail where you are looking. Treat that as map detail, not a promise that a thermal or wave will be at exactly that spot.
In this screenshot, fine ≈ 105 m means adjacent fine map details are about 105 metres apart on the ground in this area. The displayed number can change when you move to another latitude.
Cloud and wind patterns can be broader than those colored details. Zooming in enlarges the picture; it does not make the forecast more certain. Before you count on a small patch, compare nearby points and hours.
The four color chips show increasing strength. The current AGL height and units are printed at the top.
05 / Meteogram
Double-click or double-tap a map location to open its meteogram. The map is one hour over an area; the meteogram is one place over the whole forecast, from the ground up. Use it to find when the day starts working, how high it goes and when it dies.
The Units and Time switches are also in the meteogram’s top-right corner. They follow the same choices as the map controls.
In this example, the forecast at that hour shows +0.9 m/s Netto at 250 m AGL: +1.3 m/s thermal, less 0.4 m/s lee sink. The rows show how the ridge/wave (Ridge) and thermal parts change with height. On a phone, tap the colored lift area for the same readout.
The sky chart is only the top part of the meteogram. Below it, the Soaring rows (cloud base, thermal top, ceiling, working band, wind, temperature, rain, low cloud) are always shown. Tap the Surface, Radiation & stability (sunshine, CAPE, CIN) and Upper air (wind and temperature aloft) headers to open or fold them; the meteogram remembers which ones you keep open.
Soarable hours are a quick signpost for daylight hours when the forecast lift looks good enough to climb. They are a planning aid, not a guarantee that you can stay up. The green working band in the sky view shows the height range in which the forecast expects usable climbs.
Close the meteogram with × or Esc. While it is open, the arrow and Page Up / Page Down keys scroll it, and it updates itself when a newer forecast arrives; the header shows when it was last updated.
The point readout and the meteogram are calculated on request for exactly that spot, at more heights and on finer terrain than the map, which is prepared in advance for whole areas at a few heights. They may also use a newer forecast run than the map colors, which are refreshed after each run is processed. So a lift value, a thermal top or a ceiling at a point can differ a little from the map underneath it. For a particular spot, trust the point readout and the meteogram; use the map to compare areas.
06 / More tools
The small buttons in the map corners, and a few things the site does for you.
Where available, airspace from openAIP is drawn over the forecast. Airspace limits are in MSL or FL, while the lift heights are AGL. The point readout therefore gives each AGL height together with its MSL altitude, so you can see whether a good climb would take you into controlled airspace.
Popular gliding sites have their own address, such as soaringweather.com/Wasserkuppe. It opens the map at the site with its meteogram on top, so you can bookmark your home field and see its soaring day with one tap.
The site remembers your units, time format, the meteogram sections you keep open, and where you last looked at the map, so the next visit starts where you left off. If you have already allowed this site to use your location, a first visit opens at your position.
07 / Glossary
Short labels and terms used on the map and in the meteogram.
08 / Disclaimer
SoaringWeather.com is a free, non-commercial project run by a private individual. It provides automatically generated soaring and aviation weather forecasts for general information. Forecasts and maps may be incomplete, delayed or inaccurate, and the service may be unavailable. Small-scale lift can change quickly and may differ substantially from what is shown.
This site is not an official aviation weather briefing and should not be the sole basis for a flight decision. Before flying, consult current official weather reports and forecasts, NOTAMs and airspace information for the intended flight. During flight, monitor actual conditions and any available updates. The pilot in command is responsible for assessing conditions and conducting the flight safely.
The site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available", without any guarantee of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability for a particular purpose or uninterrupted availability. The author does not assume responsibility for any flight decision or for reliance on the site or its content.
Use this site entirely at your own risk. The author accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever for any decision or action taken on the basis of this site, or for any loss, injury, death, damage or expense arising directly or indirectly from the site, its content, errors, omissions, delays or unavailability, including where negligence is alleged.
Weather data: Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). Map data: OpenStreetMap contributors. Airspace data: openAIP. Third-party source data may also contain errors or omissions.