Soaring weather for glider, hang glider and paraglider pilots

Soarcast gives you the climb rate of a worked thermal, the top of the working band, and how far you can fly. It is free and it needs no account.

The climb rate in knots, for your glider class.
The top of the working band, and its thickness above the ground.
Every hour from 07:00 to 20:00 UTC, for today and the days ahead.
The air's own climb rate, before your own sink. It suits a hang glider or a paraglider.

Thermal strength over the United Kingdom, today at 13:00 UTC. The colours are the air. Below 1 kt the map paints nothing, so you see the ground.

The layers

The published layer set. The names are the names the map uses.
Layer	What it shows
Thermal strength	The climb rate in knots. Read the average thermal, or the peak thermals.
Height of thermals	The altitude of the top of the lift, MSL.
Depth of thermals	The thickness of the working band above the ground.
Max thermal height	How high you can expect to climb, AGL.
Max flight distance	The cross-country distance for the whole day, in km.
Cumulus cover	The cumulus at the working cloud base, drawn as dots over the climb rate.
Cloud type	Cumulus in white, mid cloud in amber, cirrus in red.
Freezing level	The height of the 0 °C level above the ground.
MSL pressure	The mean sea-level pressure, in hPa.
Ridge lift	Ridge lift and sink. Red is lift. Blue is sink.
Airspace	Controlled airspace from openAIP. Use it to plan. Do not use it to navigate.

Day view: Click an airfield. You get the first soarable hour, the strongest hour, the last soarable hour, the cloud base and the best cores.
Wind against height: Wind barbs through the working band, with the cloud base and the LCL marked.
Skew-T log-p: The sounding for 1 hour, with a parcel from the lowest level. Press play to step through the day.
Task planner: Draw a task. You get the course, the BGA Ladder score, the FAI badges and the airspace on the legs.
Read as: Name your glider class. Every climb figure changes with it. Keep the airmass view for the air itself.
Thermal heatmap: Stretch the colours to the day's own range. It shows where a poor day is least bad.
Time bar: Step through the hours, or play the day.

Open the map and pan to your own ground. The map picks the region for the view.

Soarcast uses a machine-learning model. Here is what the last measurement found.

The measurement	Result	The caveat
The climb rate over an area	0.56 kt of mean absolute error	It pools the truth into boxes of 22 by 13 km. At 6 by 3 km the error is 0.77 kt.
The 80% interval	3.4 kt wide, and the climb lands inside it 78% of the time	The target is 80%.
A single climb	the median climb rate reads 0.20 kt high	It covers 68 days.
The top of the working band	it reads 192 m high	SkySight ranks days by that height better than Soarcast does.

The map draws sharper than the measurement supports. Compare areas about 50 km apart. Do not compare one field with the next.

It does not see a local trigger. A quarry, a town or one dry hillside is too small for it.
It does not publish a wave layer. The map carries thermal lift and ridge lift.
It does not replace your own eyes. What you see out of the window is more reliable.
It does not navigate. Use the airspace layer to plan only.

Soarcast is free to use today.

You can put the forecast on your club website. Every site page carries the lines to copy.