I've never ever seen a storm alert from my Suunto watch until today when we are in a heatwave and there is not a single cloud on the sky

sky-runner

There were a few thunderstorms recently and my watch has never warned about that. Today is the middle of a record breaking heat wave and absolutely not a chance of storm, and the hot weather will continue for at least the next two days. The weather is very stable. However, when I returned home from the mountains, the watch has triggered a storm alert.

This all is very counter-intuitive and I am not impressed by this function! Not sure if I should trust it.

snow*

@sky-runner On my Race S it triggers occasionally, but I agree that it needs an overhaul.

elbee

I had storm alert on different watches of different brands. Occasionally had a storm alert, never when a storm was approaching.

Just something to turn off. There are better ways to be alerted for severe weather.

OutdoorMan

It worked well on my old 9 Baro, not so well since then. Never popped up on my Race 2.

elbee

@OutdoorMan

Maybe Suunto actually paid attention on the barometer implementation in the 9 baro.

The barometer is also used to count stairs. Staircount is an easy metric to check. I don’t climb that much stairs a day. On my last 3 watches that could count stairs, it was always wrong. If I compared stairscount with my wife’s Apple watch after a hike in the mountains there is a huge difference (and there is no way the tell which is worse). I’m not impressed by the quality of the barometer in watches.

I used to do hang gliding and the barometer is the single most important instrument for flying thermals. The complete device is build around the barometer. On watches, is seems more like they are cramped into it, just to be able to add it to the feature list.

sky-runner

@elbee said:

If I compared stairscount with my wife’s Apple watch after a hike in the mountains there is a huge difference (and there is no way the tell which is worse)

I find elevation tracking during an activity to be fairly accurate although a bit on the conservative side. Do you not use activity mode during a hike? Why look at inaccurate stair counting when the watch can tell you exact total climb and descent metrics in meters or feet?

peegee

@sky-runner same here, I occasionally get a storm alert but the storms never appear.
This function could do with an in-depth overhaul…️️️

maszop

@sky-runner It’s not, ‘despite the name’, any kind of storm alert (the watch isn’t a weather station) – it’s a sudden pressure drop alert, which usually precedes a rapid deterioration in weather, often a storm. On my watch, it works as intended.

As for measuring the stair count – no comment. What a privilege not to have an Apple or Garmin watch with all that silly nonsense.

aiv4r

@sky-runner isn’t it just an alert for Barometric pressure drop? If it drops by X in Z ammount of time = storm alert. Can you check your baro graph and see of that happened? Usually for me it correlates with weather change (baro drops), they might have been fidling with exact threshold, since I was getting them more often, now I do not remember when I got one.

elbee

@sky-runner said:

I find elevation tracking during an activity to be fairly accurate although a bit on the conservative side. Do you not use activity mode during a hike? Why look at inaccurate stair counting when the watch can tell you exact total climb and descent metrics in meters or feet?

The barometer is not able to measure altitude. It only measures differences in air pressure. When going up air pressure drops and the watch calculates a change in height.

There is a problem with this approach. Air pressure is not only affected by altitude but also by changes in weather. Your watch cannot determine which is which. Like I said, I used to do hang gliding. One thing you did, go to the landing zone, set your relative altitude counter to 0, go up a mountain, wait for good circumstances, do some flying, and land on the landing zone. I can assure you the relative altitude on the landing zone isn’t 0 anymore. Not because the altitude changed, but the air pressure for that spot changed.

And stair counting isn’t more or less accurate than total climb. It’s just total climb divided by average stair hight.

Barometer is great for detecting even small changes in air pressure (well, a proper barometer is). Great when flying thermals. But accurate height? Nope… Determine of a change in airpressure is due to change in height or change in weather? Nope.