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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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.
Suunto: Ambit, Ambit 3 Peak, 9 Baro, Race S, Race Ti, Vertical 2 Ti
Garmin: Forerunner 210, Forerunner 610, Fenix 6X, Fenix 7X Ti -
@sky-runner On my Race S it triggers occasionally, but I agree that it needs an overhaul.
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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.
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It worked well on my old 9 Baro, not so well since then. Never popped up on my Race 2.
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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.
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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?
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@sky-runner same here, I occasionally get a storm alert but the storms never appear.
This function could do with an in-depth overhaul…
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@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.
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@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.
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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.
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never ever on my vertical 1 either… despite being amidst a crazy storm with also local effect where hail dropped etc.
Unfortunately never. In Ambit 3 peak I did observe (same thresholds … different behavior)It seems several others have posted things…
https://forum.suunto.com/topic/9146/anyone-else-s-storm-alarm-not-triggering?_=1781516775802
https://forum.suunto.com/topic/11458/configurable-storm-alarm-threshold?_=1781516775795
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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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