How it works

The idea in one line

GoNoGo Weather takes the standard hour-by-hour forecast and scores it against the conditions that specifically matter for one activity, producing a single 0–100 suitability score for each hour. That score becomes a plain-English verdict.

The verdict bands

Score	Verdict	Meaning
70–100	GO	Conditions are within comfortable, safe limits.
45–69	MAYBE	Doable with the right gear, timing or caution.
0–44	NO-GO	One or more conditions are outside safe or sensible limits.

How the score is built

Each hour starts at a perfect score of 100. The model then subtracts points for every unfavourable condition, weighted by how much it matters to that activity. Some conditions are soft penalties (a bit of wind lowers comfort), while others are hard stops (rain grounds a drone). The remaining number is the hour's score. We deliberately keep the logic transparent rather than hiding it in a black box.

Motorcycle riding

The riding model weighs, in rough order of impact: precipitation and storms (the biggest safety factor), wind gusts (peak, not average — gusts are what unsettle a bike), feels-like temperature, and visibility (fog). Snow and ice conditions are treated as near-disqualifying. The comfortable band is roughly 9–32°C feels-like, gusts under 38 km/h, and dry roads.

About "feels-like": this is the forecast's apparent temperature, which reflects the ambient wind. It does not know you may be travelling at 80–120 km/h, so it does not include the extra wind chill of riding at speed. Expect to feel noticeably colder on the move than the figure suggests, and dress accordingly.

Critical-condition caps: on top of the score, certain conditions cap the verdict no matter how good everything else is — a thunderstorm, snow or ice, or gusts beyond safe limits can never read as GO. For drones, any rain, over-limit gusts or fog cap the verdict too. This stops one genuinely dangerous factor from being averaged away by good weather elsewhere.

Drone flying

The drone model is stricter because consumer aircraft are fragile. Any measurable rain, mist or snow is a hard no-fly. Wind gusts are scored against the ~38 km/h (level 5) rating typical of popular consumer drones, with penalties rising steeply as gusts approach that limit. Cold temperatures reduce the score to reflect battery performance loss, and low visibility is disqualifying because you must keep the aircraft in visual line of sight.

Finding the "next good window"

When right now isn't a GO, the tool scans the next 48 hours and reports the earliest run of two or more consecutive GO hours. This is the feature that sets it apart from a plain forecast: it answers "if not now, when?" directly.

The 7-day outlook

Each day is rated using its best daytime hours (roughly 06:00–21:00) rather than a single midday snapshot, so a day with a good evening window isn't unfairly marked down. The day's icon reflects its most common daytime weather.

Where the data comes from

All forecasts come from Open-Meteo, an open weather API that aggregates outputs from national meteorological services and models, including ECMWF, NOAA GFS, Germany's DWD ICON and Météo-France. Forecasts refresh multiple times per day. Geocoding (turning a place name into coordinates) also uses Open-Meteo's open dataset.

Honest limitations

A verdict is only ever as good as the forecast it's built on, and forecasts get less reliable the further out you look. Local effects — a sheltered valley, a coastal breeze, an urban heat pocket — can differ from the model. Treat the tool as a fast, honest first filter that saves you time and catches obvious no-go days, not as a guarantee. The final decision, especially anything involving safety, is always yours. See our terms and disclaimer.

We keep improving the thresholds

The scoring thresholds are informed by widely used rules of thumb from each activity's community and by manufacturer guidance (for example, published drone wind-resistance ratings). As we add activities and gather feedback, we refine them. If you think a threshold is off, we'd like to hear it — see contact.