soaring-weather

What This Skill Does

The Soaring Weather skill provides professional-grade thermal and soaring weather forecasts tailored specifically for glider pilots and paragliders. Using high-resolution ICON-D2 data provided by Open-Meteo, this agent acts as an advanced meteorology assistant. It processes 11 key weighted parameters—including wind shear, mid-level humidity, foehn indicators, and slope-lift potential—to calculate a precise 'Thermal Score' (0–10). The skill generates detailed, easy-to-read reports including thermal strength (m/s), cloud base height, boundary layer height, and specific warnings for storm, foehn, or shear-induced instability. It is designed to interpret natural language requests to provide situational awareness for regional alpine zones or custom coordinate points, serving as a reliable companion for flight planning.

Installation

To add this skill to your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/achimace/thermikbuddy

Ensure that your environment has Python 3 installed, as the skill relies on internal scripts within the baseDir to perform the heavy-lifting calculations and API requests to Open-Meteo. Detailed logic and specific weighting thresholds can be reviewed in {baseDir}/references/scoring_params.md.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for:

• Cross-country (XC) flight planning for glider pilots during the weekend.
• Local soaring assessment in complex alpine terrain like the Bavarian Alpenrand or the Inntal.
• Assessing safety conditions such as over-development (Cb-risk) or high wind shear which may compromise thermic stability.
• Pilots who want a quick, standardized score to determine if a trip to the airfield is worth the effort.

Example Prompts

1. "Wie sieht das Flugwetter am Wochenende im Werdenfels aus? Soll ich meinen Streckenflug planen?"
2. "Lohnt es sich morgen in der Schwäbischen Alb zu fliegen, oder ist die Windscherung zu hoch?"
3. "Wie ist die Thermik-Prognose für meine Position bei 47.5N, 11.2E?"

Tips & Limitations

• The skill uses a proprietary scoring engine. Always verify critical safety decisions (like potential thunderstorm development) against official DWD or local aviation weather warnings.
• The 'Hangflug-Bonus' is highly sensitive to wind direction. Ensure you understand the prevailing wind patterns in your specific region to interpret the bonus correctly.
• In cases of strong Föhn or high-CAPE scenarios, the skill applies a hard cap to the score to prevent over-optimism in volatile conditions. Use the provided links to external services like SkySight or TopMeteo to cross-reference the data when in doubt.