Winter mode is live: snowkiting from Ladoga to the Murmansk tundra

Six winter locations in one planner

The Water / Snow switch on the home page opens a dedicated flow: the rider selects experience level, skis or snowboard, and a time period. The service compares hourly ICON, ECMWF IFS and GFS forecasts and shows mean wind, gusts, direction, temperature, precipitation and model spread.

The winter map is not a list of random open spaces. Five venues are supported by Russian Yachting Federation calendars or reports; Kokkorevo is a Saint Petersburg-area pilot with a wind sensor, but the service does not verify its ice.

• Kokkorevo and Lake Ladoga — a local Leningrad Region pilot.
• Logmozero and Lake Onega — winter venues in Karelia.
• Tolyatti and the Zhiguli Sea — an official competition area.
• Novosibirsk Reservoir and Mayak Yacht Club.
• Murmansk Region — Mount Erivave in the tundra near Teriberka.

Murmansk: we can model the wind, not the terrain

The Russian Yachting Federation describes Erivave as a popular Murmansk Region kite spot and documents a national championship there. Teriberka is therefore a separate planner location searchable as Murmansk, Teriberka, Erivave or its Cyrillic spellings.

This is tundra terrain rather than a flat urban lake. A weather model cannot assess cornices, visibility, avalanche exposure or other local hazards. A current organiser, agreed route, communications, rescue plan and on-site briefing are required. The website forecast is only a first information filter.

Why the winter index is capped at 64 out of 96

Winter mode scores wind and weather only: mean wind, gusts, three-model spread, precipitation and air temperature. These factors can produce at most 64 points. The remaining 32 are deliberately unavailable because a remote forecast cannot see ice thickness or structure, cracks, weak ice, snow, current restrictions, obstacles or rescue readiness.

There is therefore no green go-ahead state in winter mode. The interface says only wind window to verify, borderline conditions or no stable wind window found. Obtain fresh local information before travelling, then reassess the surface, visibility, temperature, route, equipment, communications and your own condition on site.

Measuring which model is actually more accurate

A technical forecast-and-observation archive launched with winter mode. Every ten minutes it stores new ICON, ECMWF and GFS snapshots for 27 project locations and separately records available observations from Saint Petersburg and Egypt sensors.

The archive contains no rider weight, contact details, Telegram IDs or free text. Its current status is collecting data. We will not publish accuracy percentages until there are enough comparable forecast–observation pairs. The archive will later support model-error reporting by lead time, region and weather situation and inform further calibration.

What comes next

This first winter release is a foundation, not a completed map of Russia. We will add verified venues, cameras, officially available sensors, organiser contacts and local restrictions. A location can receive a fuller status only after its sources, surface, access and rescue arrangements have been checked.

Winter kite venues willing to confirm launch coordinates, surface type, working wind sectors, restrictions, rescue, camera or weather-station sources can contact info@npo-nt.ru. We will record the source and verification date.