How do I use Atmo for locations other than the bay area demo linked on their website? I tried URL tweaking without much luck. I have a friend who does a lot of sailing races who would love this!
I've also wondered if they have hand tuned the model to match local observations and geography in the Bay Area, and if it could generally apply elsewhere without a lot of manual work? In particular, it is mind blowingly accurate at getting the wind shadow around Angel Island, which is a complex thing to do, because it involves ocean wind that divides into at least 3 separate streams, and then recombines in complex ways. No other model I've seen can predict which of those 3 stream will dominate, but they usually can.
I've noticed the same with e.g. car navigation/map software- it generally works much better in the Bay Area where the developers and companies making them actually live, than elsewhere. I could imagine that in both cases the developers use it themselves in the place they live, and investigate/fix local errors themselves.
Your observation about navigation software is accurate in my experience too :)