Forecast Wind Arrow Frustation

Mark-1

Mark-1

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For most of my life the convention was Wind arrows are 'from' and tide arrows are 'to'.

In recent years weather apps seem to choose randomly, I suspect in a deliberate effort to frustrate and confuse me. Sometimes I have to go back to synoptics just to see what the arrow is telling me.

Today was the final insult. On the met office website I scrolled down to work out what convention they followed to find they use the text 'direction from' but the arrow is 'direction to'. 😡🤯😢


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I get what you're saying, but if they inverted the arrows it would definitely confuse the general population. Need to think about who the target audience is and it's not sailors.
The "direction from" refers to the written letters, (ESE etc) not the arrows it would seem.
 
That is indeed very confusing. just an arrow showing the direction the wind is blowing TO seems the most intuitive to me, no compass abbreviations required.
 
greeny said:
I get what you're saying, but if they inverted the arrows it would definitely confuse the general population. Need to think about who the target audience is and it's not sailors.
The "direction from" refers to the written letters, (ESE etc) not the arrows it would seem.
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It obviously confues the people who display the direction but I'm not sure that arrows pointing upwind is a purely nautical convention. Weather cocks always have the arrow pointing upwind not downwind. Whether a sailor or not, in the absence of any other indicator someone/a child asked the wind direction will instinctively turn their face into the wind and point that way. So I think almost everyone visualizes wind as coming from somewhere rather that going to somewhere. (Except in the Bible, obvs.)

Having said all that I don't feel strongly about the chosen convention as long as it's acknowleged and applied by everyone so I don't have to remind myself for each app. Or maybe just use windfinder which gives a clue at the top.
 
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NormanS said:
It looks perfectly straightforward to me.
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I failed to explain clearly enough that typically the sole indication on wind direction is the arrow alone, like this:

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So it's only straightforward if you know what convention that site is using this week. Or if you remember the convention each site/app uses which I don't.



It probably appears straightforward in the original post because I'd scrolled down past the normal arrows to the point where they stated the wind direction in text. Which yes, is clear because a text compass bearing with "from" is unmistakable. But then the arrow was going to opposite way to their stated convention. Which is what moved me to post.
 
Obviously been pissing me off for a long time:

Mark-1

Thread 'Wind Arrow/Vector Direction Conventions'

There are two ways in which a wind arrow/vector vector can be drawn.

1) Arrow pointing in the direction with wind is coming from. ie Arrow points N for Nly wind. (See Chimet.)

2) Arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of wind, ie with the wind, like a wind barb (ie Arrow points S for a Nly wind). (See BBC/Windguru's Meteograms.)

Do the two wind arrow conventions have names?

We got the opinion of a weatherman that time.
 
Marsali_1 said:
North and south cardinal marks point in the direction of their name. Seems logical to expect a wind arrow to do the same.
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Try aviation, air and windspeed in knots or m/s. Visibility in metres, nm, feet or miles, altitude in feet, metres or flight levels, cloudbase in feet or metres, all depending on what part of the world you fly in. And the international language is English, unless you have an exemption like France (and French Canada) which causes huge loss of situational awareness for all the pilots who don't speak french when operating in France, Montreal etc.
 
Leslie frank said:
Interesting
I can't say i have ever seen option 1 (north wind has arrow pointing north). So for that reason I wasnt confused by it at all. Arrows and wind vectors come from the direction of the name of the wind on all my wind apps... I.e arrow points north equal southerly
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You really have. Chimet; all your instruments point that way; Church Windvanes have the arrow upwind, as will your masthead wind vane and and the ubiquitous dinghy wind indicators. According to the thread I linked that's the internationally agreed convention and I'd say up until smartphones came along it was totally standard for the arrow to point into the wind in any context. Everyone knew that convention. Tide arrows went the other way, with the flow.

That changed when smartphones came along with hour by hour arrow diagrams. I don't mind change but it doesn't seem to have changed in an agreed consistent way and it's always annoyed me. Today was the final straw. 😁
 
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Mark-1 said:
For most of my life the convention was Wind arrows are 'from' and tide arrows are 'to'.

In recent years weather apps seem to choose randomly, I suspect in a deliberate effort to frustrate and confuse me. Sometimes I have to go back to synoptics just to see what the arrow is telling me.

Today was the final insult. On the met office website I scrolled down to work out what convention they followed to find they use the text 'direction from' but the arrow is 'direction to'. 😡🤯😢


View attachment 209890
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I am confused by your post.
On every website I have ever seen for the past decade or more the wind arrows are, for example, pointing to the left (West) for an East wind.
Never seen anything different. Ever.
Xc Weather, Met Office, BBC, Predict Wind etc all the same. As are GRIB files. And mountain forecasts.
Am I missing something here?
 
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dunedin said:
I am confused by your post.
On every website I have ever seen for the past decade or more the wind arrows are, for example, pointing to the left (West) for an East wind.
Never seen anything different. Ever.
Xc Weather, Met Office, BBC, Predict Wind etc all the same. As are GRIB files. And mountain forecasts.
Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...


Solentmet/Chimet still doesn't, but a quick look around suggests all the hourly app apps I can think of show to not from. If everyone agrees that all the common Weather forecast apps/websites have consistently draw the arrow "from" instead of "to" and they never change then that solves that problem for me - there has been a consistent convention I just missed it.

Grab files, don't count. They're barbs not arrows and they have always conformed to the agreed convention for grib files. Same with animated wind vectors. They are as expected and consistent.
 
There was the same confusion at the Battle of Crecy: the longbow arrowheads were coming from the English side but pointing towards the French... then hand signals got involved, or was that only after Agincourt?... it was all a right old mess!
 
i can’t think of any app (or tv forecast) that has ever drawn the wind anything other that the way it is blowing. This is completely logical. I can only assume you are confusing synoptic charts which use the tail of the arrow to show the direction it is coming from - but there is no arrow head.
 
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The bit that might confuse is that the diagram says ‘direction from’ and then the arrow is pointing to WNW. So it could be misunderstood by someone not used to the convention as meaning the wind is coming from the WNW.

Edit: I’m off to see some non sailing friends today. I’ll see what they think the diagram implies and report back. I should ‘fess up here and say I’ve always had a bee in my bonnet re wind direction descriptors. ie if you’re travelling in a northerly direction you’re going from south to north, whereas the opposite applies to wind.
 
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