A live score for “will there be wind?”
Built from 10 years of hourly wind data, embeddable on any kite school's site. Still a work in progress — how it's calculated is below.
Verify your school's listing — free — and we'll set this up with your real spot and data.
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<script src="https://kitesurfing.me/kitescore-widget.js" async></script>How it's calculated
Pulled from the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API (ERA5 reanalysis, free, keyless) — 10 years of hourly wind speed, gusts and direction, filtered to daylight hours. Caveat: ERA5 is a global reanalysis model, not a local sensor — spots with strong microclimates can feel different in person.
Wind speed, per level
Ramps up through an optimal band, back down past a safety ceiling. Foil and Wave aren't skill tiers — they're disciplines with genuinely different wind needs.
| Level | Min | Optimal | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 10 kn | 12–18 kn | 22 kn |
| Freestyle | 12 kn | 15–22 kn | 27 kn |
| Big Air | 15 kn | 20–30 kn | 33 kn |
| Foil | 6–10 kn | 10–18 kn | 25 kn — strong wind is unpleasant on a foil, not helpful |
| Wave | 10 kn | 15–20 kn | 27 kn — direction matters more than strength here |
Direction — a safety gate, not a bonus
A multiplier, not something added — great wind speed from offshore should never rescue the score.
| Direction | Factor | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-shore / cross-onshore | 1.0 | Safest, most consistent |
| Onshore | 0.9 | Safe, some shorebreak risk |
| Cross-offshore | 0.25 | Experienced riders + boat backup only |
| Offshore | 0.05 | Effectively excluded |
Gustiness
Gap between gusts and sustained wind. Under 5 kn is normal; 10–15 kn+ gets unpredictable. Beginners are penalized hardest, Big Air tolerates the most.
| Spread | Beginner | Freestyle | Big Air |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–5 kn | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| 5–10 kn | 0.7 | 0.85 | 0.95 |
| 10–15 kn | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0.8 |
| 15+ kn | 0.05 | 0.25 | 0.5 |
The gradient
A continuous 5-stop gradient (teal → green → gold), sampled from Windguru's real wind-speed palette — stops at gold on purpose, since Windguru's red means “very strong wind”, not “bad”.
Not in scope yet — feedback welcome
- Tide — affects launchability at some spots, no clean free data source yet.
- Water state (flat / chop / wave) — not derivable from weather data alone.
- Wave-level swell — currently a wind-only approximation, not real swell height/period.
- The regional ranking in the widget is illustrative until the full cross-spot dataset is wired in.