Why use this instead of a generic weather app for a shooting decision?

A generic forecast is built to answer 'should I bring an umbrella'. A shooting-day call has different inputs: sustained wind aloft (not just at the surface), gust spread above sustained, computed density altitude from station pressure (not sea-level reduced pressure), dewpoint and mirage band at the shooting hours, and a severe-weather override that does not cap an entire spring afternoon at POOR just because the model flagged the cell for possible thunderstorms. This page runs all five components on every forward hour and reports the result as a 0-100 shootability score banded OPTIMAL / GOOD / OK / MARGINAL / POOR.

What is density altitude and why does it matter for shooting?

Density altitude is the equivalent altitude the air feels like to a bullet or arrow at standard conditions. Lower air density means less drag and a flatter trajectory; higher density means more drag and more drop. A shooter who zeroed at 1,000 ft DA on a cool morning may print four to six inches lower at the same distance when DA climbs to 6,000 ft on a hot dry afternoon, even at the same range. The page reports DA computed from the station's actual pressure and ambient temperature so a long-range hit call is grounded in the air the bullet is flying through, not a sea-level reduction.

Why station pressure and not the sea-level (MSL) pressure most weather apps report?

The ICAO precise density-altitude formula takes the actual ambient pressure at the station, not the altimeter-style reduction to sea level. Feeding MSL pressure into the formula misrepresents DA by roughly the elevation of the station, because MSL pressure has already been adjusted upward to remove that elevation. The math here uses station pressure directly so the DA number lines up with what a Kestrel on the bench would read.

What does the shootability score actually measure?

It is a weighted geometric mean of five hourly components: sustained wind (28 percent), precipitation rate and condition (30 percent), temperature with wind-chill or humidex (18 percent), gust spread above sustained wind (12 percent), and visibility (12 percent). Precipitation is weighted just above wind because for most outdoor shooting and archery rain is a binary go / no-go gate, while wind degrades a session and rain ends it. A weakest-link cap pulls the headline down to MARGINAL when any single component is catastrophic, and a severe-weather override pins the headline to POOR for confirmed lightning, hail, freezing rain, blizzard, or violent shower.

How is severe weather gated so the score does not flag every unstable afternoon?

WMO codes 95 / 96 / 99 (thunderstorm) on forecast hours mean 'thunderstorm conditions possible in this grid cell during this period', not 'thundering on you right now'. The severe-weather override suppresses itself for those codes unless the same hour reports non-trace precipitation or a precipitation probability of 50 percent or higher. The STORM RISK chip requires three concurrent afternoon signals (CAPE at or above 1,500 J/kg, lifted index at or below -3 K, and a model precipitation probability at or above 30 percent) so the chip fires for real convective setups and not for every warm-front cell.

Is the page free, and can a club embed the same data on its own site?

Yes to both. Every range page is free to read, and a drop-in iframe at /embed/atmospherics/ is free for clubs and ranges to paste onto a WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, or Shopify page without any developer, API key, JS install, or account. The iframe and the public range page run the same scoring engine, so they always agree.

How often does the data refresh?

Live weather is pulled from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0) and cached per-range for 15 minutes with single-flight coalescing and stale-while-revalidate, so ten visitors arriving in the same minute trigger one upstream call. The 24-hour forecast strip and the TOMORROW summary run on the same cached payload, so the score on the headline, the strip, and the embed are always computed from the same numbers.

Range Atmospherics — Live Conditions for Recognised Shooting and Archery Ranges

Live wind, temperature, dewpoint, density altitude, pressure, and visibility for a curated directory of recognised outdoor shooting and archery ranges. Each range is scored 0-100 against a fixed five-component rubric (sustained wind, precipitation, temperature, gust spread, visibility) and classified into one of five named bands tuned for outdoor rifle and archery practice.

What is reported

Sustained wind speed and direction, gust speed, air temperature, computed dewpoint (Magnus-Tetens), relative humidity, station pressure, visibility, and computed density altitude (ICAO standard atmosphere, derived from station pressure and temperature) in feet and metres. Conditions update every 15 minutes from Open-Meteo.com.

Classification rubric

The 0-100 shootability score is a weighted geometric mean of five sub-scores: sustained wind (28%), precipitation rate and condition (30%), temperature with wind chill or humidex (18%), gust spread above sustained wind (12%), and visibility (12%). Outcome bands are fixed thresholds: 90 and above is OPTIMAL, 75-89 is GOOD, 50-74 is OK, 30-49 is MARGINAL, below 30 is POOR. A weakest-link rule caps the headline at MARGINAL when any single component is catastrophic; a severe-weather override forces POOR for lightning, hail, freezing rain, blizzard, or violent shower observations. The rubric is tuned for centerfire rifle past 300 yards and target archery; pistol, rimfire, and shotgun shooters can read the score one band more lenient.

Disclaimer. For information and entertainment only. No accuracy, fitness or safety guarantees are made. Verify conditions on the line before any shot.

Ranges currently indexed

380 shooting and archery ranges across 25 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, USA, United Kingdom. Per-range pages live at /atmospherics/<range-slug>; country index pages live at /atmospherics/country/<country-slug> for countries with two or more ranges.

Why use this instead of a generic weather app?

As a sport shooter, the single thing you want from a forecast is an at-a-glance go / no-go read on your range for the next few hours and tomorrow. A generic weather app gives you raw numbers; this page gives you the interpretation a shooter would make from those numbers. The underlying weather model is the same one anyone else pulls from Open-Meteo — no claim of more accurate observations or forecasts than a national weather service — but the reading on top is shooter-specific:

At-a-glance go / no-go. One 0-100 shootability score and a colour-coded 5-band classification (OPTIMAL, GOOD, OK, MARGINAL, POOR) for now, the next 24 hours, and tomorrow. You glance at the strip and you know whether to drive out, postpone, or call it.
One score, one band, same rubric everywhere. Five components (sustained wind, precipitation, temperature with wind chill or humidex, gust spread, visibility) combined the same way across every indexed range, so a GOOD afternoon at one club is directly comparable to a GOOD afternoon at another.
Density altitude in feet and metres. Computed from live station pressure and temperature at each range's reported elevation using the ICAO precise barometric formula — the value bullets actually fly through, not just the surface temperature most weather apps stop at.
Gust spread, not just gust speed. The delta between sustained wind and peak gust is what destabilises a shot; the rubric scores it explicitly.
Best window planner. The 24-hour forward-looking strip and tomorrow summary highlight the highest-scoring daylight hour and the longest contiguous block of daylight hours scoring GOOD or better — useful for planning a session, not just checking conditions right now.
Honest severe-weather handling. A weakest-link cap holds the headline at MARGINAL when any one component is catastrophic; a severe-weather override forces POOR for confirmed lightning, hail, freezing rain, blizzard, or violent shower observations. Forecast-risk codes (WMO 95/96/99) without measurable precipitation or meaningful probability are deliberately not treated as confirmed observations, so unstable spring afternoons aren't auto-flagged POOR.
Wind aloft, CAPE, lifted index, and air quality. Surfaced where the upstream model exposes them at the grid point — convective indicators feed a separate storm-risk chip; PM2.5, PM10, and UV are reported as raw values.
Curated to recognised outdoor ranges. Coordinates and elevation are verified per range, so the model is queried at the actual point rather than the nearest postcode centroid.
Embeddable on range websites. Each range page has a free drop-in iframe at /embed/atmospherics/<slug> with operator-pinned theming — see embed-docs.

Genuine limitations are documented on methodology: the scoring is opinionated (rifle past 300 yards and target archery as the reference disciplines, so pistol and shotgun shooters can read the band one step more lenient), and a model grid cell is not a wind meter on the line. Verify on the line before any shot.

Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), fetched on demand and cached for fifteen minutes per range.

Range Atmospherics — Live Conditions for Recognised Shooting and Archery Ranges

What is reported

Classification rubric

Ranges currently indexed

Why use this instead of a generic weather app?

Argentina (3)

Australia (17)

Austria (6)

Belgium (5)

Brazil (8)

Canada (114)

Chile (1)

Czech Republic (3)

France (5)

Germany (10)

Ireland (10)

Italy (7)

Japan (2)

Lithuania (1)

Mexico (1)

Netherlands (7)

New Zealand (19)

Norway (2)

Poland (7)

South Africa (3)

Spain (5)

Sweden (1)

Switzerland (5)

United Kingdom (9)

USA (129)