Measured, not promised
We checked 305,512 forecasts against real wind stations
Round the clock, launch by launch, OutDare compares what its own forecast said with what a real wind station nearby actually measured. This page is the whole record since 17 June 2026 — including the parts that make us look bad. It is the reason the app checks a station before it tells you a launch is on.
- 305,512
- forecast checks
- 5,076
- launches measured
- 5,813
- wind stations used
- 5.3 km/h
- typical miss
How a check works
One launch, one moment, two numbers
Take the forecast
The wind OutDare was showing for that launch at that hour — the same forecast a pilot would have read in the app, auto-routed to the best regional model for that spot.
Take the station
The reading from a live wind station near the launch at the same moment: fresh, at a comparable altitude, and cross-checked against its neighbours so a sheltered garden sensor cannot referee.
Write down the gap
Both numbers and the gap go into a log. A "hit" is a forecast within 5 km/h of the station — the same bar the app's own per-launch score uses.
No forecast is graded against another forecast, and no model is graded on a spot it was never asked to serve. The window below covers 293,792 checks between 24 July 2026 and 7 September 2026, at 5,077 launches.
What we found
The forecast is most reliable exactly where it matters least
Split every check by what the forecast promised, and the pattern is hard to miss. When a forecast says the air is calm, it is right 70% of the time. When it says the wind is in the band you actually fly in, that falls to 41%.
| The forecast said | Checks | Within 5 km/h | Within 10 km/h | Station gusting 35+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calmunder 10 km/h | 193,485 | 70% | 94% | 1.4% |
| Flyable10–24 km/h | 95,104 | 41% | 74% | 10.9% |
| Strong25–34 km/h | 4,549 | 26% | 49% | 46.3% |
| Very strong35 km/h and up | 654 | 17% | 38% | 70.4% |
The last column counts only the 83.3% of checks where the station reported a gust value (77,825 of them in the flyable band).
One flyable-looking forecast in 9 — 10.9% of them — was hiding gusts of 35 km/h or more at the station. Read the same forecast on a calm day and that risk is 1.4%.
That is the number that changed how OutDare works. A model can be excellent on average and still be the wrong thing to trust on the morning you are deciding whether to drive to the hill.
The direction of the miss
When the wind is really up, the forecast reads low
Models describe the average wind over a grid square. Launches sit on ridges and spurs, where the air speeds up. So when it is genuinely windy, the station on the hill almost always reads higher than the forecast did.
The honest caveat, before someone else makes it: that figure is measured by picking out the moments the station was high, and picking extremes always flatters the other number a little. That is why the table above is grouped by what the forecast said instead, which has no such effect. Both ways of cutting the data point the same direction — the miss is toward calmer than reality, which is the direction that costs you.
Wind direction holds up better: within one compass sector 73% of the time whenever the station reads 10 km/h or more.
At your launch
An average is no use to you. Your hill is.
4,642 launches have been checked at least 25 times, and they are nothing like each other.
A launch scores badly for reasons that have nothing to do with the model being bad: the nearest station is four kilometres away, or down in the valley, or tucked behind the very ridge that makes the site fly. Which is exactly why an average would be misleading and every launch gets its own published score instead — on its page here, and on its page in the app.
Look up your launchWhat we did about it
Four things in the app exist because of these numbers
- 1
A station on the hill outranks the forecast
Before OutDare pushes an alert saying a launch is good right now, it looks at the live station. If the station is reading over your limits, the alert is held back — however good the forecast looked.
- 2
Alerts that fire on a measurement, not a model
The newest alert type watches live stations and tells you the moment a launch has actually come on, sustained over consecutive readings rather than on a single gust.
- 3
Every launch publishes its own score
The per-launch number is on the site page and in the app, good or bad, with the station it was measured against named. A launch with too few checks shows a count and no percentage rather than a flattering guess.
- 4
The best regional model, per launch
Instead of one global model everywhere, OutDare routes each launch to the best high-resolution model covering it — AROME in the French Alps, ICON-D2 in Germany, UKV over Britain. Measured against the stations, that beats the one-size default.
Where this is weak
What these numbers cannot tell you
- A station is not the truth, it is a witness. Masts sit where someone could put one, not where you launch. We drop sensors that have never once shown wind, and we prefer well-sited networks over back-garden weather stations, but a reading 3 km away is still a reading 3 km away.
- Only 5,290 launches can be measured at all. Out of more than 13,900 on the map, those are the ones with a live station close enough to referee. The rest get a forecast and no scorecard, and their pages say so rather than inventing one.
- This measures wind speed, not flyability. Thermals, convergence, rotor and cloudbase are not in these figures. A forecast can nail the wind and still be a bad day to fly, and no app on the planet can make that judgement for you.
- Gust figures use 83.3% of checks. Not every station reports gusts. Where one does not, that check is left out of the gust columns rather than counted as calm.
Figures on this page are generated straight from the production measurement log and last refreshed on 7 September 2026. The running total of 305,512 checks is banked daily and covers 17 June 2026 onward; the detailed tables use the 293,792 checks currently inside the 24 July 2026 to 7 September 2026 window. Spot an error, or want a cut of the data we have not published? Write to contact@outdare.app.
The app that checks its own homework
Free, worldwide, no account needed. Pick your launches, set the conditions you fly in, and let OutDare watch both the forecast and the wind stations for you.