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
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My SV1 often gives a storm alert, when there is a storm - i.e. I think mine works well. I’m not sure why some would work and others not - it is triggered by the rate of drop of pressure, nothing else.
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My V2 works as expected. It goes off when a storm is approaching.
I sit at work opposite someone with a Garmin and they generally go off pretty close to each other.
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It would be interesting to know how the programmers have decided what triggers a “storm alert”. I’m fairly impressed with mine and that it doesn’t trigger a storm alert every time I go up an elevator, or shortly after takeoff in an airplane (both of which involve rapid pressure decreases—perhaps too rapid?). To issue a proper “storm alert” of course would require more information than the sole input of a certain pressure change and a look at some actual weather inputs, but I consider it a useful (if limited) tool in the chest, and if nothing else, at least a “nudge” to take a 360 degree look around and assess what I see…but not a reason in itself to open the umbrella and seek shelter
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The watch waited years for its big moment and everyone immediately questioned it. Poor thing
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@skifast12 The atmospheric pressure decreases with height (the weight of the overlying air column lessens as you ascend). It also depends on the meteorological situation. To isolate the meteorological situation pressure by removing the effect of the height on the pressure, meteorologists “correct” the actual pressure to a kind of normalized pressure at sea level (using height, temperature, humidity, …). This allows to compare two pressures measured at different point with different height. It is on this sea-level corrected pressure that the drop is supposed to be computed.
So, if you use an elevator/take an air plane, the real pressure lowers but the corrected sea-level pressure remains mostly the same.
The atmospheric pressure shared by meteorologists in communication medias is the sea-level pressure. -
That’s all very theoretical and not how it works in a watch.
On a plane, the air pressure in the cabin is kept at a constant 0.6 - 0.8 atmosphere (depending on the plane type) and for good reason.
An elevator will not go high enough to cause a big enough drop in air pressure to trigger an storm alert.
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Never a single accurate alert in my case (S9PP). I do not trust it at all.
J
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I live in the Alps, where the weather in the mountains can change drastically very quickly. So the “Storm alert” is a welcome feature. Of course, this does not mean that there will be a storm or severe weather, but that you should be more attentive and observe your surroundings even more.
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@LGoSo I’m an airline pilot so I understand how atmospheric pressure works. It’s just a watch though without any access to met information, not even to actual altitude data (aside from GPS which isn’t very accurate in the third/vertical dimension)…it’s just a dumb pressure sensor. The storm alert is generated by some software code that someone has decided what triggers and what doesn’t. I’m guessing that the storm alert doesn’t trigger with the rapid ascents I mentioned because it has been programmed to look for longer-term pressure drops; perhaps over the span of an hour or two, which might actually miss fast-moving frontal systems.
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@elbee Been to a big city with high rise buildings lately? A frontal system might only drop 0.05 inHg, with stronger storms around 0.30inHg, which convert to 50 and 300 feet of elevation change respectively. The Burj Khalifa as an extreme example is 2,717’ tall. Airplane cabin altitudes vary immensely but normal cruising altitudes are around 7,000 to 8,000 above sea level, so there has to be something preventing the storm alert from triggering from these everyday events. We’re all just guessing unless Suunto programmers let us in on their logic…
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