Opening Weather in the Orca App
The Weather view in Orca can be opened in two main ways:
From a Weather pin on the map
From Routing, when viewing weather along a route
Use the Weather pin when you want to check the forecast for one specific location. Use Routing when you want to see forecast conditions along a planned route.
Weather pin
Orca creates a Weather Pin automatically when you open Weather directly. Alternatively, you can create a Weather pin manually by long-pressing the map or searching for a specific location to create a normal pin, followed by clicking the Weather button to convert this pin into a Weather pin.
Open Weather directly
Use this method when you want weather for the area currently shown on the map.
Tap Weather.
Orca automatically drops a Weather pin in the centre of the map.
The Weather view opens for that location.
Long-press on the map or Search for a location
Use this method when you want weather for a specific location.
Long-press the location on the map or search for a specific spot using the search feature.
Tap Weather.
Orca drops a Weather pin at that location.
The Weather view opens for the selected point.
In both examples shown above, you can move the Weather pin around by scrolling on the map.
Routing weather
Use Routing weather when you want to see weather along a planned route instead of at a single Weather pin.
How to open weather from Routing
Open or create a route.
Open the route weather view by selecting the Weather button in the top right hand side of the screen
The Weather view opens for that route
What is shown by Routing weather
Routing weather shows forecast conditions along your route.
The white circle with the blue outline on the route represents your estimated position at the selected forecast time. Next to it, a large white pill with a blue outline shows the weather conditions at that exact spot. If you scroll horizontally through the weather charts, you will see how the weather changes along the route.
You can also look at the white pills without the blue outline which show the weather conditions at various points along the route. You might have to zoom in before these appear.
Weather view
Once you have opened the Weather View, either via a Weather pin or along a route, you will be able to see more information about the weather.
Weather categories available in the Weather View
In the Weather View you can switch between the available weather tabs. The Weather view includes:
Rain
Wind
Currents
Tides
Waves
By default, Rain will always open first if your boat is a motorboat, and Wind will always open first if you have a sailboat.
Each tab shows information for the selected location or route. Weather charts can be scrolled horizontally and map symbols update according to the selected forecast time.
Breakdown of the weather view
For each weather category, the weather view is made up of two main components:
The Map
The Bottom sheet
Map
Common features on the Map for the various Weather tab overlays are:
Weather pin or Location along a route
Marks the location the forecast is based.
Data source label
Appears in the bottom-right corner of the map.AUTO is shown where Orca automatically selects the forecast source or model for the selected area.
For Rain, Wind, Currents and Waves, the following features are also homogenised:
Heatmap
Represents intensity. In general, stronger colours indicate stronger weather. An expandable legend can be found in the bottom left hand corner.Animated particles
Represent both intensity (particle animation speed) and direction of weather.
The Tides overlay does not show neither a heatmap nor animated particles.
Bottom sheet
The bottom sheet has the main weather chart and then an expanded view.
Weather chart
Common elements
Some elements on the various weather charts are the same for all of the different weather categories:
Time segments
The day of the week, followed by the day of the month are shown in the top left hand corner in bold. Following on from left to right, the hours of the day appear from 0 (midnight) to 23 (11pm).The time being analysed
A black oval with the time in white and with a semi-transparent grey line descending from it represent the time being analysed and whose weather conditions will appear on the map.The current time
A semi-transparent blue line represents the current time.
Returning to the current time
If you scroll away from the current time, tap the currently selected weather tab again. Orca returns the chart to now.
Example: if you are viewing Wind, tap Wind again to return to the current time.
The Orca App persists selected tab and time for 30 seconds. Thus, if you go out of the weather view and back in fairly soon after, you will continue where you left off. If more than 30 seconds pass, you will go back to defaults.
Available forecast ranges
Each weather category comes with 12 hours of past data and, depending on your Orca subscription tier, up to 5 or up to 10 days of future data (see each weather category article for more precision).
Data scrolling resolution in charts is 20 minutes.
Expanded view
Each tab can be expanded.
For Rain, Wind, Waves and Currents, two main pieces of information are shown:
The weather model selected (or AUTO if there are not multiple choices available)
The last time the forecast was updated
For Tides, a low and high tide chart table is shown along with information about the tide station the data derives from.
For more information about each of the expanded views, see the specific helpdesk articles related to each weather category.
The bottom sheet can be fully pulled down when viewing the weather along a route, but cannot be hidden when viewing the weather from a weather pin.