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Comment by hga | Hacker News Reader

Not at all clear except on calm days; all my readings about sniping and very long range target shooting talk about the need to read the winds way beyond the location of the shooter. Long target ranges have flags at intervals, snipers have to learn how to read it from vegetation movement and so on.

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Interesting. I suppose at such long distances one can no longer assume that wind speed is the same at the target's location. I wonder if tech like this could be made to also read wind speed from vegetation movement?

I shoot service rifle at 600 yards on a range with wind flags at 100 yard intervals. It's not uncommon at that range for the wind to be blowing in opposite directions at each interval. At that range you can make an accurate read on the wind speed at the target purely from the mirage, reading vegetation movement is not necessary.

My understanding is that down range wind sensing systems do so by reading the mirage as well.

I don't know if it is the same thing that you are alluding to, but LIDAR can be used to measure distant wind speeds. I don't know if the output would be suitable for shooting, but it has been used in sailing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR#Meteorology_and_atmosphe...

http://optics.org/article/34878

http://www.gizmag.com/catch-the-wind-racers-edge-laser-wind-...

That's cool stuff. Seems like it could be useful if it could be miniaturized.

ETA: The binocluar device in the last link is pretty close, if they can extend the range from 300m and drop the price tag from $150K!

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