The forecasts behind WindStoke, what makes ours different, and what Premium adds. Short on purpose.
Every wind app draws on the same handful of government models. Here is what each one is good for, in a sentence or two.
The official forecast from your local NWS office, with a human forecaster reviewing the model output. Strong on the Great Lakes, where the offices know their water. This is the forecast every WindStoke account gets.
The sharpest short-range model available in the US. Fine enough to see a squall line or an afternoon lake breeze that coarser models smooth away. The one to check the night before and the morning of.
The global model most forecasters lean on for medium-range trends, from day three onward. Coarse at the shoreline, but a useful read on whether next weekend's system is real.
The US global model and the longest view we carry. Useful for spotting a pattern change a week or more out; not something to plan a session on by itself.
On the Great Lakes we use GLWU, the wave model built for them; on the coasts, WAVEWATCH III. Wave heights are open-water significant height, so the number at the beach is usually smaller than the number on the buoy.
Free accounts get the NWS forecast, seven days out, as the Weather Service publishes it.
Premium accounts are on Forecast Lab unless they choose otherwise. Forecast Lab isn't another model. For your spot, it serves whichever of the models above has actually measured best there, corrected for your local wind meter. You can also pick any single model yourself from your alert profile or the forecast page; a corrected forecast is labelled with a + (NWS+, HRRR+).
Most apps are a nicer window onto the same model data. None of them come back the next morning and tell you how wrong it was.
WindStoke does. Every forecast we serve is checked against the nearest wind meter once the hour has passed, and we keep that record for every spot with a meter. It is public: any station page shows what last night's forecast was worth against what the meter recorded.
That record is what the rest is built on:
We don't publish the exact formulas. What we do publish is the result: the accuracy record, per station, updated nightly, for anyone to check.
All of it runs on your break, not a regional average, and starts learning your spot the day you add it.
Start your free season Full Premium free through Dec 31 — no charge until Jan 1, cancel anytime · see what's includedNWS and HRRR refresh hourly; GFS and ECMWF every six hours. Forecasts are cached for one to two hours, so refreshing sooner than that shows the same run.
Wind is in knots everywhere: forecasts, meters, alerts, emails. Wave height in feet, period in seconds.
For alerts and your dashboard: Settings → edit an alert profile → Forecast Model. For a one-off look, use the model picker on the forecast page; that's a view, not a setting.
Usually one of three things. It's a forecast, and a mean error around 3 kt is a good one. A lake breeze or an upwind gradient has arrived that the model didn't see, which is what the thermal and upwind tools are for. Or the forecast is over the water and you're reading a meter behind the dunes.
Email support@windstoke.app with your spot and the day you were looking at.
You shouldn't have to know any of this. Tell WindStoke your spot and what you need, and it tells you when.
Start your free season Already have an account? Open your dashboard