What every output field means - wstar, cloudbase, day rating, and more.
Convergence lines are the long-distance pilot's quiet superpower - thin streets of forced lift you can fly along without ever circling. Here is what the new convergence and divergence fields actually represent and how to read them.
`day_rating` is a composite label: poor, marginal, fair, good, or excellent. Under the hood it comes from an internal score, but the API returns a readable label. Here is how to interpret it without being misled.
The sounding endpoint gives you the full vertical profile at any point in the domain. Here is how to read the things a sounding is good for and ignore the things it is not.
`boundary_layer_m` and `hglider_agl_m` are two different numbers in the API. They come from the same meteorology but mean different things, and mixing them up gives you the wrong briefing.
`hglider_agl_m` is the height a glider can actually work up to, capped by cloudbase and the top of the useable thermal layer. It is not the raw boundary layer height.
`thermal_trigger_temp_c` is the surface temperature that has to be reached before the first thermal of the day breaks the morning inversion. The field is in the API today as a placeholder. Here is what it will do once it lands.
Pilots see `wstar_ms` and read it as thermal strength in metres per second. That is not what it is. Here is what the number actually represents.
