Tips for windy weather: How to make the most of your WindRadar

When strong winds are in the forecast, do you know how to make the best use of your WindRadar?

Even if there is no named storm, strong winds can often spread across Ireland and the UK, with both the WeatherRadar and WindRadar providing a full array of colours and shading to investigate.

Here you can read more about how to make the most of these features — and will hopefully give you a tailwind to explore the maps!

First things first: The quickest way to get to the WindRadar is by tapping the wind symbol in the Weather Right Now section at the top of the app's home page.

You can also access it via the WeatherRadar and tap the wind sock symbol in the navigation bar on the right.

The WindRadar is an interactive map that allows you to explore wind gusts at any location in the world. There are two layers of information in the map that help you to decode conditions.

The first layer is small, animated white lines on the map. These represent the wind flow and describe the direction of the wind. The longer and more densely packed the streamlines are, the stronger the wind flow.

The second layer is a colour-coded field that shows the strength of the gusts. Warmer colours like orange, red and purple indicate stronger winds up to hurricane force.

We have recently added colour even for the lowest levels of gusts, so the map is no longer "naked" if there are weak or calm winds.

We've built this map based on the same technology as the WeatherRadar and you can navigate the WindRadar exactly as you are used to in the WeatherRadar.

You can see the weather here and also now and three days ahead by switching time periods in the menu below.

You can either play the selected time period by pressing the play arrow, or you can drag the slider bar to control the movement of the map yourself.

Additionally, you can zoom in and out using two fingers, showing more locations as you zoom, plus move around the world by dragging the map with one finger.

You can find the legend by tapping the "i" symbol in the top right corner, just below the button you use to share the map. Here you can see the exact values for each colour level.

However, we hope to have built our maps in such a way that you can quickly get a visual overview of what mood the weather is in, without the need for a legend.

Now you know how to keep track of the strong winds this week, and stay safe!