The final (for now) piece of the PNW App Suite: Wind, Waves & Tides

[Evan B]

The past several months, I've pretty much turned working on stuff for the site here into another full time job... and that's on top of already having 1 full time job plus my part time gym coaching job. So wrapping this up before my busy fishing got underway was the goal, and I think I'm going to meet that. Plus, I get the satisfaction of finally pointing to my degree in software development as having done something useful.

This particular app was the biggest, most hours working-intensive of all the apps along with MyFlyVise. The Tuna Map and the River Flows apps were both pretty straightforward, but they both helped lay the groundwork for this larger project as they all use a lot of the same data sources, open source map tools, etc.

The vision here: A weather app built entirely around fishing. It distills things down to the data points most fishermen are looking for. I found myself often having to bounce between 2-3 apps to get everything I wanted, so I built this into something that I myself find very useful, which I'm hoping translates to others as well.

It will be most useful for those planning trips in their boats, but whether on foot or not, we all can benefit from weather reports.

This particular one gives full access to all forum supporters. Non-supporters get basic data and functionality, but multi-model data and some of the more precise forecasting data is gated after the free trial. The more advanced data points and multi-model features cost money to do API pulls from, so it's not something that we can offer for free. But given how little we require to be a forum supporter, we hope it inspires some to chip in.

It will also be released as an app on Android and Apple mobile stores, but that's been a much, much slower process than I anticipated. So I'll post up once those are finally live.

Sign In | Wind, Waves & Tide Models

pnwfishing.net

 

[VMP]

The past several months, I've pretty much turned working on stuff for the site here into another full time job... and that's on top of already having 1 full time job plus my part time gym coaching job. So wrapping this up before my busy fishing got underway was the goal, and I think I'm going to meet that. Plus, I get the satisfaction of finally pointing to my degree in software development as having done something useful.

This particular app was the biggest, most hours working-intensive of all the apps along with MyFlyVise. The Tuna Map and the River Flows apps were both pretty straightforward, but they both helped lay the groundwork for this larger project as they all use a lot of the same data sources, open source map tools, etc.

The vision here: A weather app built entirely around fishing. It distills things down to the data points most fishermen are looking for. I found myself often having to bounce between 2-3 apps to get everything I wanted, so I built this into something that I myself find very useful, which I'm hoping translates to others as well.

It will be most useful for those planning trips in their boats, but whether on foot or not, we all can benefit from weather reports.

This particular one gives full access to all forum supporters. Non-supporters get basic data and functionality, but multi-model data and some of the more precise forecasting data is gated after the free trial. The more advanced data points and multi-model features cost money to do API pulls from, so it's not something that we can offer for free. But given how little we require to be a forum supporter, we hope it inspires some to chip in.

It will also be released as an app on Android and Apple mobile stores, but that's been a much, much slower process than I anticipated. So I'll post up once those are finally live.

Sign In | Wind, Waves & Tide Models

pnwfishing.net

Outstanding Evan! Thank you for creating this, wind and tides are crucial for planning any trip in the salt, I also typically bounce between sites like https://www.dairiki.org/tides/ for tides, Windy, sailflow or NOAA marine forecasts for wind and waves, the ability to have it all in one spot is awesome. Are you looking for feedback similar to what you did with the other apps or this is it, so far looks great on a quick perusal!

 

[Evan B]

Outstanding Evan! Thank you for creating this, wind and tides are crucial for planning any trip in the salt, I also typically bounce between sites like https://www.dairiki.org/tides/ for tides, Windy, sailflow or NOAA marine forecasts for wind and waves, the ability to have it all in one spot is awesome. Are you looking for feedback similar to what you did with the other apps or this is it, so far looks great on a quick perusal!

Feedback is always appreciated. Can't guarantee I can or will implement all of it, but sometimes seeing things from another perspective helps a ton. I just have to let people know in advance that some seemingly small changes are actually massive projects.

 

[Zak]

I just started playing around with this and I like it a lot. I am having trouble finding the chance of precipitation for the coming hours and days. Is it there and I just missed it?

 

[Evan B]

I just started playing around with this and I like it a lot. I am having trouble finding the chance of precipitation for the coming hours and days. Is it there and I just missed it?

didn't display the "chance" of precipitation, just precipitation forecasted. I can try to work that in there. I find "chance" percentages to be such a gamble that it'd just be wasted space for me

 

[Evan B]

I just started playing around with this and I like it a lot. I am having trouble finding the chance of precipitation for the coming hours and days. Is it there and I just missed it?

I'm going to turn that line back on for now. If it pisses me off, it gets the axe, though!

 

[Zak]

didn't display the "chance" of precipitation, just precipitation forecasted. I can try to work that in there. I find "chance" percentages to be such a gamble that it'd just be wasted space for me

I might have been misreading what I saw. I thought it was showing me actual measured precipitation, not the forecasted amount of precipitation. That's because it had zeros going forward in time, but I see now that that could have just meant zero precip forecasted.

 

[Chucker]

That is really cool. I usually can’t be bothered to check all the models, and sometimes that is a big mistake! having the tides right there too is handy, switching between apps is annoying.

Do you have access to current speed predictions as well as tide level? I use them both in the sound, and sometimes they are different by quite a bit.

 

[Evan B]

That is really cool. I usually can’t be bothered to check all the models, and sometimes that is a big mistake! having the tides right there too is handy, switching between apps is annoying.

Do you have access to current speed predictions as well as tide level? I use them both in the sound, and sometimes they are different by quite a bit.

I just have the forecast models. Current readings mostly just come straight from NOAA, which I can probably grab. Not sure that exists for tides though. Tides are very much prediction-based and way too many variables can change how they behave as many of us have experienced.

 

[Evan B]

I might have been misreading what I saw. I thought it was showing me actual measured precipitation, not the forecasted amount of precipitation. That's because it had zeros going forward in time, but I see now that that could have just meant zero precip forecasted.

Exactly - we're getting some precip down my way today, but it's nil after that.

 

[Kado]

Well done! I guess I’ll finally have to straighten out that supporter status. I’ll PM you to figure it out. We tried before but I think I have to rejoin …..

 

[CanoeGuy]

Even has solunar - this is wonderful!

 

[Evan B]

Even has solunar - this is wonderful!

That's for @clarkman

 

[clarkman]

Wow, what a privilege!


In all seriousness, appreciate all of the work y'all are putting into this!

 

[PhilR]

Very cool, and I like that it has some of the cascade lakes where I have to be very wind-aware. Thanks.

I'd love to see something with tidal impacts on water levels and flow on the Columbia, but as we've chatted in the past there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, nor any sources you can link to.

Thanks for doing this

 

[Evan B]

Very cool, and I like that it has some of the cascade lakes where I have to be very wind-aware. Thanks.

I'd love to see something with tidal impacts on water levels and flow on the Columbia, but as we've chatted in the past there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, nor any sources you can link to.

Thanks for doing this

Yeah, that's a whole thing I'm not sure can really be done. There's so many factors that affect that and they change on location, river flow, strength of the tide, etc. There may be a way to build a model that gets close, but it's not something I think I'd put a lot of faith into.

 

[PhilR]

Yeah, that's a whole thing I'm not sure can really be done. There's so many factors that affect that and they change on location, river flow, strength of the tide, etc. There may be a way to build a model that gets close, but it's not something I think I'd put a lot of faith into.

I’ve tried for the Vancouver gage and couldn’t find a formula to relate them, let alone what it means elsewhere.

 

[Stonedfish]

Not asking for this here, but it would be nice with the sliding hourly tide chart to be able to go backwards like say a week or so and look at the tides again. Let’s say there was great cutthroat fishing last Thursday starting at 10:00. It would be great to be able to see what the tide height was at that point. All the sites I visit allow you to look forward to future tides, but I’ve never found one with a sliding hourly chart that lets you go backwards. Once that particular day is over, that data is gone. Being old, I tend to forget to look at it the day I fished. A monthly calendar view with sliding hourly charts would be absolutely killer.
SF

 

[Evan B]

Not asking for this here, but it would be nice with the sliding hourly tide chart to be able to go backwards like say a week or so and look at the tides again. Let’s say there was great cutthroat fishing last Thursday starting at 10:00. It would be great to be able to see what the tide height was at that point. All the sites I visit allow you to look forward to future tides, but I’ve never found one with a sliding hourly chart that lets you go backwards. Once that particular day is over, that data is gone. Being old, I tend to forget to look at it the day I fished. A monthly calendar view with sliding hourly charts would be absolutely killer.
SF

Historical tide data is possible. Historical weather data is expensive

 

[Chucker]

Not asking for this here, but it would be nice with the sliding hourly tide chart to be able to go backwards like say a week or so and look at the tides again. Let’s say there was great cutthroat fishing last Thursday starting at 10:00. It would be great to be able to see what the tide height was at that point. All the sites I visit allow you to look forward to future tides, but I’ve never found one with a sliding hourly chart that lets you go backwards. Once that particular day is over, that data is gone. Being old, I tend to forget to look at it the day I fished. A monthly calendar view with sliding hourly charts would be absolutely killer.
SF

The app that I have on my phone (tide graph) lets you look at tides for dates in the past. I think that many of the other apps that I have used do too. Doesn’t have the nice sliding hourly thing though!