View attachment 7989
View attachment 7986
As red squirrel mentioned you can add image overlays like I did
I found a compass and arrow to help mark the wind directions
It's easy to tweak the arrow direction, I had one place before I hunted the wind shifted several times and became more southernly
I tweaked that arrow on the swamp I wanted to hunt and adjusted my entry and stand hang based on this visiual
I have multiple small swamps I hunt and I needed to know at a glance which ones to hunt on any particular wind
using the principle of deer bed woods/obstructions to their backs I placed the arrows in that direction
Now when I go out hunting I know which areas are better suited for a particular wind and where to setup based on the wind
Hope this helps
These discussions on wind behavior need to keep in context the terrain and structure makeup in, not just our individual regions, but also in the specific stand locations. The differences can be extreme from region to region and individual location to location.
One thing that is the basis of how we predict surface winds is knowing what the prevailing, or winds aloft, are doing. Those winds are associated with fronts and pressure systems and are generally very stable. Go a thousand feet in the air and those winds are not fickle. They are doing what the front dictates... pretty much in a stable compass direction.
But come down to ground level and wind behavior can be erratic. Why? There are a ton of reasons why surface winds aren't doing what the prevailing wind is doing and those behaviors of surface wind interact with each other. Pressure differences caused by wind over complex terrain, coupled with differences in thermals are the main factors of why surface wind can be different than prevailing wind. Keep in mind the differences between table-flat land, and areas with long parallel ridges and then areas of hills that are basically humps with valleys in different directions.
Something about thermals that I never hear anyone discuss is how sun (or shade) across hilly terrain is often not uniform in it's amount of exposure to the sun.
Example: One stand that I hunt is located where an East slope sharply meets a SSW slope. Early in the morning, the sun warms that East slope sooner than the SSW slope. During the earliest period after sunrise, the E slope is in the sun exposure and is beginning to warm under the daytime thermal pattern. The SSW slope is still in the shade and under the nighttime thermal pattern. There are 2 different and distinct thermal patterns locate adjacent to each other
going on at the same time. There is a "line" where those opposing thermals meet and that line moves across the landscape as the sun rises in the sky. By mid-morning thru later afternoon the sun is high in the sky and competing thermals fade. But as evening approaches and the sun begins to set, the pattern at that stand reverses as those slopes reverse in their exposer to the sun.
The early morning and late afternoon when we experience the most deer movement, thermal flow in complex terrain is so intricate. Toss-in a partly sunny sky and thermals get even more complicated. How does one put a wind cone or arrow on a map under those circumstances?
An example of how different thermals can be in these 3 areas...
1)Flat land; as the sun does it's arc from sunrise to sunset, heating and cooling is fairly uniform across the landscape. There are also fewer changes in surface pressure. Wind in flatland is much more predictable.
2)Areas with parallel ridges and valleys; Wind patterns are more complex than flatland, but it also has larger areas of sun exposure than than areas of complex structure of hills and valleys. Surface patterns do differ caused by areas of pressure differences but the areas are larger due to larger terrain consistencies.
3)Areas where hills and valleys lay in a complex pattern; Highly complicated wind patterns exist due to competing thermals and also wind eddies. And the wind behaviors in those areas "struggle" with, and effect, each other...its not static.
Just putting cones or arrows on a map in relation to prevailing wind direction works only to a certain extent and depends on endless factors.
Predicting how surface wind will move past our stand depends not only on terrain, but it also varies due to structure on the terrain (cover thickness) and surface wind can change with the slightest change of the prevailing wind angle over the terrain orientation, and, just as importantly...the speed of that wind. A NW prevailing wind blowing over a straight N to S ridge will behave differently on the leeward slope as the wind speed changes.
This is not to say we can't predict wind patterns. We can, but it's far more difficult in some types of terrain than other areas.
What we
can rely on pretty well is what the current winds aloft are doing. Most weather sites are fairly accurate and are on the same page as each other in their predictions of prevailing wind, but they are vastly different on surface winds.
Take a look at the hundreds of personal weather stations that are shown on Wundermap (WeatherUnderground). Some of those personal weather stations are only a few miles apart, but they often show wildly differing wind directions than each other. Why? Terrain causes eddies. Our job is to learn how prevailing wind creates surface patterns on our land, and how speed also effects those patterns. No hunting app has a wind cone that can accurately show surface wind.
I like windy.com
It shows an animated screen of winds aloft and the image can be shown on either a satellite image or too map. Both images have value for surface predictions. The top image allows us to "see" the aloft wind in relation to terrain. Predicting what the wind actually does on the surface, more specifically...
our terrain around our stand is something a bit more complicated.
The satellite image allows us to "see" the wind in relation to cover patterns where we hunt.
), he can still see the wind.