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Reading your flyability status

How UAV Meteo turns raw weather data into a simple go / caution / no-go signal.

Reviewed by the UAV Meteo Editorial Team — last reviewed August 2026.

UAV Meteo pulls live numbers from Open-Meteo and NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, then compares each value against limits commonly recommended for small consumer and prosumer multirotor drones. The banner at the top of the app always reflects the single worst condition — if wind is fine but visibility is poor, you'll still see a warning.

Wind speed & gusts

Sustained wind at 10 m above ground and gusts are both rated against your drone profile's thresholds. Gusts matter more than average speed because they cause sudden attitude changes a drone's flight controller has to fight against.

Wind direction

The Wind Direction card shows the compass degree and compass-point label (e.g. "NW"), plus a large rotating arrow next to the number — the same arrow glyph as the card's small label icon, just bigger, rotated to match the reading, so you don't have to translate a degree number into a direction yourself. The degree figure itself stays the raw meteorological convention (direction the wind is coming from, matching every other weather source); only the arrow's rotation is offset to point where it's blowing to, since that's what a directional arrow reads as at a glance.

Wind by altitude

The expandable panel on the home screen shows modeled wind speed and direction at 10 m, 80 m, 120 m and 180 m, with the same rotating arrow at each height so you can see the wind shifting direction as it shifts speed. These come straight from Open-Meteo's atmospheric model levels — they are the only four heights Open-Meteo genuinely models distinctly for this location; other heights are not available. If wind increases sharply with altitude or changes direction, expect a different flight profile as you climb — useful when planning aerial photography or long-range flights and factoring in your return-to-home battery margin. This panel does not show gusts: Open-Meteo does not publish gust data at any altitude besides 10 m (that's already on the main Wind Gusts card), so rather than show an always-empty column here, gusts are left out of this panel entirely.

Wind units, including Beaufort

Wind and gust speeds can be shown in m/s (the default, matching aviation METAR/TAF convention and most drone manuals), km/h, mph, or the Beaufort scale (Bft). Beaufort is a coarse 0–12 scale describing wind by its observed effect rather than a precise number — Bft 4 ("moderate breeze") covers roughly 5.5–7.9 m/s, for example — so it is most useful as a quick, memorable gut-check rather than for reading exact thresholds. All flyability thresholds are computed in km/h internally regardless of which unit you have selected for display.

Precipitation probability

Most consumer drones are not weather-sealed, so this is rated purely on the probability of rain — regardless of whether it has actually started falling yet.

Visibility

Visual line-of-sight rules in most countries require you to be able to see your aircraft clearly.

Cloud cover & temperature

These two are rated on different shapes — cloud cover only ever reaches caution, temperature is a harder limit on both ends.

Kp Index (space weather)

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center publishes two related but different Kp-shaped products. UAV Meteo's Kp Index card leads with the official 3-hour planetary Kp — an average across 8 ground-based magnetometer stations worldwide, finalized (or provisionally "estimated" just ahead of finalization) once per 3-hour window. This is the same product most other drone-weather apps display as their headline Kp figure, and — being an average across a global network rather than one noisy instant reading — it essentially never lands on an exact 0.00 the way a raw live reading can during a genuinely quiet minute. NOAA's faster-updating 1-minute estimated Kp nowcast is still shown as a small secondary "Live" reference right below the main figure, but it is not used for rating/flyability and is not the headline number.

If the official reading is unavailable, the card shows — instead of a number rather than silently defaulting to zero — a genuine reading of 0.00 (quiet geomagnetic conditions) and a missing reading are never shown identically.

Elevated Kp values correlate with GPS positioning errors and compass/magnetometer drift, both of which can contribute to a drone "toilet bowling" or losing its home-point lock — but Kp is a global indicator of geomagnetic activity, not a direct, local measurement of GNSS quality at your exact position, and it is not equivalent to a universal aviation no-fly threshold. Treat it as one input among several, not a standalone verdict: UAV Meteo flags Kp 3 and below as good and anything above that as caution — the Kp Index card is deliberately capped at "use caution" and can never by itself flip the overall status to "not suitable," unlike wind, gusts, precipitation, visibility, or temperature. See What Does the Kp Index Mean for Drone Pilots? for a fuller explanation of why. The Kp Index card's trend arrow, and the Kp figure shown per hour in the Next 24h forecast and per day in the 7-Day forecast, all come from this same official 3-hour product's forecast tail (NOAA publishes predicted future Kp alongside the historical readings), attaching whichever 3-hour window covers that hour/day — the 7-Day view specifically shows the peak forecast Kp for that day, not an average, since a single elevated window is what matters for flight planning.

Humidity & UV index

These two are informational rather than hard go/no-go blockers — they only ever reach a "caution" state, never "not suitable."

Air quality & barometric pressure

Air Quality shows the US AQI for your location. Like Cloud Cover and Kp Index, it only ever reaches "use caution", never "not suitable" — it's a comfort/haze indicator, not a hard flight-safety limit.

Barometric pressure is shown for reference and trend only — it isn't rated, but a rapidly falling pressure trend often precedes a change in weather faster than the forecast updates.

Daylight & twilight

The Daylight card shows whether it's currently full daylight, civil twilight, or night at your location, computed from precise sun-position astronomy (via the SunCalc library) rather than just the sunrise/sunset times alone. The sub-label shows the next change as a clock time plus a countdown, e.g. "Sunset at 8:30 PM in 3 h and 25 min", rather than a raw minute count. Many jurisdictions — including FAA Part 107 in the US — have separate rules for twilight and night operations (e.g. anti-collision lighting requirements), so knowing which phase you're in matters beyond just knowing it's "light out."

Tap the card to open its detail popup, which also lets you enable nautical and/or astronomical twilight (in addition to civil, which is on by default) — once enabled, the card itself starts showing that finer phase (e.g. "Nautical twilight" instead of a flat "Night") and its countdown tracks the next boundary among whichever bands you've turned on, not just civil's.

How the good / caution / not-suitable calculation actually works

Every rated card compares its current value against two numbers from your active drone profile: a good cutoff and a caution cutoff. For a metric like wind speed, where higher is worse, a value at or below the good cutoff rates "good", above that but at or below the caution cutoff rates "caution", and anything higher rates "not suitable". Visibility works the same way in reverse (lower is worse). Temperature uses a range check — good between a minimum and maximum, widening slightly for caution on both ends. If the underlying data point is missing entirely (a failed upstream fetch, not a real reading), the card is rated "unknown" and is treated as neither good nor bad — it does not count toward escalating the overall status, but it also does not get silently treated as fine.

The single status banner at the top of the app reflects the single worst rating across two separate groups, computed independently:

Tap any individually-rated card to see a "Why?" explanation specific to that metric — including for green/good cards, which explain what threshold they are being measured against rather than staying silent. Tap the main status banner itself for the combined explanation across every flagged condition.

Trend arrows

Several cards show a small up/down/flat arrow next to the label, comparing the current value to where it's headed over roughly the next two hours (for most metrics) or against NOAA's own next 3-hour forecast window (for the Kp Index card specifically). This is a lightweight glance at whether conditions are improving or deteriorating without having to open the full hourly forecast. A small threshold ("epsilon") is applied per metric before showing up/down rather than flat — this avoids a jittery arrow from noise-level model fluctuations that aren't a meaningful real trend.

Planning ahead: Flight Window

Everything above describes the live dashboard — current conditions plus roughly the next couple of hours. If you're planning a flight for a specific date and time up to 7 days out, Flight Window runs the exact same rating engine against that window instead, so you get one clear answer for the moment you'll actually be flying, rather than whatever conditions happen to be right now.

Alerts & notifications

Tap any rated card's "Why?" popup to find a Settings section where you can set a custom alert threshold for that specific metric and enable notifications for it. Once enabled, crossing that threshold shows an in-app toast immediately, and — if you've granted browser notification permission — fires a local notification too, even in a background tab. If you also grant push permission, that same alert can reach you with the app closed entirely, since your location and thresholds are then checked on a schedule server-side (see privacy for exactly what that involves). Either way, treat alerts as a convenience, not a substitute for checking conditions yourself before flying — see our legal & disclaimer page.

Refreshing data

The refresh icon in the top bar re-fetches weather, air quality, and satellite data for your current location immediately — useful if you have had the app open for a while, or if you have installed it as a home-screen app (a PWA), which has no browser reload button of its own. Separately, if a new version of the app itself has shipped, an update banner appears briefly and the app reloads automatically the next time you have it open — you never need to manually reinstall a PWA to get app updates.

Favorites

Tap the star icon in the top bar to save your current location. Once you've saved at least one, the location name itself becomes tappable — opening a quick-switch list of every saved spot, so you can jump between the places you fly most without re-searching each time. Favorites are stored only in your browser.

Save conditions

The "Save conditions" button on the home page saves a snapshot of the exact numbers and flyability rating shown at that moment — it's a record of what the weather looked like when you checked, not a log of an actual flight, so it's just as useful for saving conditions you're considering flying in later as for ones you already flew. Every saved snapshot is stored only on this device (My Flights) and never requires an account.

Drone profiles

Different aircraft tolerate wind, rain, and temperature differently. Use the drone profile selector on the home screen to switch between presets (standard consumer, lightweight/sub-250g, or prosumer/cinema), or build a custom profile from your own drone's spec sheet — wind resistance, a weatherproof/IP rating, and an operating temperature range are all derivable from facts most manufacturers publish directly, and every threshold above shifts accordingly.

GNSS satellites above horizon

Unlike most figures on this page, this count is not a placeholder: it's computed server-side using real-time SGP4 orbital propagation against live GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo constellation data from CelesTrak, counting how many satellites across all three constellations are geometrically above the horizon for your location right now. It can't account for local obstructions (buildings, terrain, your drone's orientation) or which satellites your specific receiver has actually locked onto — this is an orbital-geometry estimate of what's available in the sky, not the number of satellites your drone has locked. A true lock count needs direct access to a device's GNSS chipset, which will be available in the upcoming UAV Meteo mobile apps.

Weather by location

The Weather by Location page has live flyability conditions for 50 real places drone pilots search for and fly at — grouped by continent and country — each with real context on what actually shapes the weather there (funneled coastal wind, monsoon seasons, mountain-valley temperature swings) rather than just numbers. Useful for planning a trip somewhere you don't fly regularly, not a replacement for checking your own home location on the main dashboard.

Map

The map page shows your current location, a live wind-direction arrow, and an adjustable range-guide circle (500 m to 5 km) over a Road, Satellite, or Hybrid base layer — tap the map anywhere to check the forecast for that spot instead, and the full current-conditions grid and forecast below the map update to match. Where configured, it can also show a community-maintained (OpenAIP) airspace overlay — see the next section for how to read it.

Free tools & calculators

Beyond the live dashboard, a set of free calculators covers wind margin, flight time, GSD, field of view, golden hour, mapping coverage, mission planning and more — useful on their own, and built on the same real weather data and thresholds as the rest of UAV Meteo.

Airspace & no-fly zones

UAV Meteo focuses on weather, not airspace restrictions. See our airspace & no-fly zone page for links to the official tools you should check before every flight, or our NOTAM reader if you already have a NOTAM you need decoded.

This is guidance, not a clearance to fly

These thresholds are general-purpose defaults, not manufacturer specifications or aviation authority regulations. Always check your drone's official operating limits, local airspace restrictions, and current regulations before every flight. See our legal & disclaimer page for full details.