Germany - Soaring Weather API
High-resolution WRF forecasts across the whole country. Wasserkuppe, Hahnweide, Klippeneck, Hochries, Tegelberg, the Schwäbische Alb, the Bavarian Alps and Allgäu, the Rhön, the Erzgebirge, and the long northern flatland XC tracks - thermal strength, cloudbase, convergence, day rating, served as JSON four times a day.
Model specifications
What you get for Germany coverage
Core forecast fields available now at 4 km.
Thermal Strength
wstar_ms - thermal updraft velocity in m/s
Soaring Height
hglider_agl_m + hglider_msl_m - usable thermalling height
Cloudbase
cloudbase_agl_ft + cloudbase_msl_m, Cu potential, OD risk
Wind
surface_wind_* plus wind_925_*, wind_850_*, wind_800_*, wind_700_*
Surface Conditions
surface_temp_c, dewpoint_2m_c, rh_2m_pct, rain_total_mm
Day Rating
day_rating - poor, marginal, fair, good, excellent
Corridor Sampling
Weather along a route - time-aware available
Sounding Profile
Full vertical profile - temp, dewpoint, wind
Query Germany forecasts in seconds
Pass region, resolution, and any covered coordinate - the API resolves the nearest model grid point and returns the forecast.
Request
curl "https://api.convek.dev/v1/site?region=de&resolution=4km&lat=50.5&lon=9.95&time=13:00" \-H "Authorization: Bearer cvk_live_your_key_here"
Response
{"valid_date": "2026-05-09","valid_time": "11:00","rasp_model": "de/4km","site": {"wstar_ms": 1.9,"hglider_agl_m": 789,"cloudbase_agl_ft": 3079,"cloudbase_msl_m": 1580,"surface_wind_speed_ms": 1.2,"surface_wind_dir_deg": 125,"day_rating": "fair"}}
About soaring weather in Germany
Germany has one of the largest gliding communities in the world. The Schwäbische Alb thermal flying, the Bavarian Alps, the Rhön (where modern gliding was born on the Wasserkuppe), the long northern flatland XC days, and the wave systems on the Erzgebirge cover a huge range of forecast problems for a single country - and a 13 km global model averages most of them away.
ICON-EU at 6.5 km is the obvious public benchmark for German weather. Convek runs a dedicated 4 km WRF on top of GFS specifically for the soaring fields - thermal strength, glider-capped soaring height, convergence lines, MSL cloudbase - that ICON does not post-process for pilot use. Sites separated by an Alpine valley do not share a thermal cycle, and the regional model is what resolves that.
MSL cloudbase is the field worth flagging for German pilots specifically. Launch altitudes range from 50 m on the northern flatlands to over 1700 m in the Alps - the AGL number on its own does not tell you whether you can clear the next ridge. The day rating uses the same scoring function as every other Convek country, so 'good over Wasserkuppe' is directly comparable to 'good over Greifenburg' or 'good over the Long Mynd'. Day-window and sounding labels use Europe/Berlin.
Germany coordinate range
The live de/4km region covers Germany including the Bavarian Alps, the Schwäbische Alb, the Rhön, the central uplands and the northern flatlands. Valid coordinates for queries sit inside this bounding box:
Latitude
46.8° N - 55.2° N
Longitude
5.2° E - 15.5° E
Requests outside this domain return 400 Bad Request with a message explaining the coordinates are outside de coverage. See the coverage overview for other regions.
Start querying Germany soaring data now.
Free tier - 25 queries/day. No credit card required.