Having umm-ed and ahh-ed over adding this into my Manaslu & Tsum: Update blogpost, I decided that Yr’s Wonderful Weather Forecasts merit a blogpost all of their own.
Yr – Yr.no – has been my go to website for trek and trip weather for a while now. It describes itself as “a joint service by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation”.
I am absolutely amazed by Yr’s coverage – I’ve found dedicated forecasts for all these places on our November trek to Tsum and then on around the Manaslu Circuit:
Initial section into Tsum and back
Arughat
Lapubesi
Dobhan
Philim
Lokpa
Chumling
Chumchet
Chhule
Ripche (Ripchet)
Manaslu Circuit on from Tsum
Prok
Hinanggaun (Hinang / Hinang Gaun)
Lho
Samagaun (Samagaon / Sama Gaon)
Samdo
Chamje / Chyamche (back on the Annapurna Circuit)
Syange
As well as the less surprising…
and the more unexpected
West Nepal
Manaslu (8156 m) – “Other” as in “Mountain”, prompting me to look for…
Himalchuli (7893 m)
Ngadi Chuli (7871 m)
It’s not just the geographical coverage that impresses, the graphics, features and functionality do too.
Now that I’ve added these locations as “My Places”, I can see a super summary forecast for the next 3 days, and click throughs to the hour by hour and long range forecasts, all on one page:
As well as three flavours of forecast – showing summary icon and hover over narrative eg “partly cloudy”, temperature (including “feels like”), precipitation and wind speed & direction – and sunrise and sunset times, the Overview page has a map plus, at the bottom, latitude and longitude (degrees and decimal) and altitude, and a link through to Google Maps. And information about the place name including how it’s represented in other languages. AND a link to free weather forecast data (Javascript- or XML-forecasts):
Just to underline how amazing this all is, that screenshot is the Overview weather forecast for Chumchet, West (Nepal), which I visited during my Tsum Valley Trek in April 2015.
This is Chumchet:
Here it is on Google Maps:
And for completeness, here’s what you get when you click through to some of the other data sets Yr has to offer for Chumchet:
Hour by hour weather forecast for Chumchet – includes a Meteogram:
Detailed hourly weather forecast for Chumchet – adds in pressure, humidity, dew point and cloud cover:
Long term weather forecast for Chumchet – gives you a summary and detailed forecast for the next 9-10 days:
Why look anywhere else?