Thermal Trace Hunt
Explore estimated wind and thermal flow across the terrain before choosing where to scout.
Put it on your phone
Android: open the planner in Chrome, then choose Install or the browser menu → Add to Home screen.
iPhone: open the planner in Safari, then Share → Add to Home Screen. Open it from its new icon.
This is an installable web app. An App Store or Google Play listing is not available yet.
Planned early-access pass
One payment. No automatic renewal. Choose a membership separately if you want to continue.
Paid access is not open yet. The current field beta is public. Checkout and account-based access are still being prepared; this page does not take payments or start a paid access period.
First trip checklist
- Open your area while you have a connection and wait for elevation and weather to finish loading.
- Check the weather source and timestamp. Move the time slider for available forecasts, or change wind direction and speed for a simulation.
- Hold the map to add scouting pins. Compare predicted flow with milkweed and record what you observe.
Keep another navigation map available. Airflow calculations require an internet connection. Offline simulation is not available. Saved notes and cached elevation areas are device-local; clearing browser storage can remove them.
Airflow and purple disturbance paths are estimates. They do not establish actual turbulence, deer movement, a safe route, property access, or a guaranteed stand location.
Simulated airflow — field verification required
Thermal Trace Hunt is a scouting and planning aid. Its airflow overlay estimates possible wind, thermal, and disturbance patterns using available elevation data, sun-position calculations, local terrain-shadow checks, available wind and forecast cloud cover, available station temperature history or date-matched local sensor air readings, and a simplified six-hour surface-to-air heating/cooling response. The response coefficients and wet/snow scenarios are experimental, not a validated surface-energy solver. Shadow checks use the available local and wider elevation grids, stopping at their coverage limits; terrain beyond the loaded grids, individual tree shadows, and satellite-image shade are not calculated. A manual whole-view woodland scenario reduces modeled sunlight and wind penetration with provisional coefficients; it does not classify vegetation automatically. Missing cloud data uses a clear-sky assumption. The animated paths are simulations, not measurements of airflow at your exact position. Loading current weather does not make the overlay a live measurement.
Actual conditions may differ substantially and change without warning. Vegetation, canopy shade, small terrain features, gusts, local heating and cooling, and data age or gaps may affect airflow in ways the model does not capture. This field beta has not established a validated accuracy rate. No airflow direction, thermal transition time, turbulence location, scent-control result, deer movement, or hunting outcome is guaranteed.
Check the wind and thermals in the field before choosing an approach or stand. Use milkweed or another suitable wind indicator and repeat checks as conditions change, including at the height where you will hunt when safe to do so. Follow your observations when they differ from the simulation. Check weather timestamps; saved weather or manually adjusted settings may not reflect current conditions.
Use your judgment and independent navigation, weather, and safety information. The app does not establish that a route or stand is safe or that you have permission to enter land. Follow applicable hunting rules and landowner permissions.
Share feedback for a future release
Feedback helps prioritize improvements. It does not automatically change the airflow model.
You choose the recipient. Nothing is automatically submitted to the developer, and no pins, photos, GPS position, or account information are attached.
Independent terrain rendering
Local terrain relief uses the same loaded elevation gradients as the airflow engine, with fixed lighting to show terrain shape. It stays separate from the time-dependent 12% sun-shadow layer. Zooming redraws the local relief; it does not invent elevation detail. In Layers, switch Local terrain relief off or select USGS relief fallback. Local relief is available only inside loaded elevation coverage. The independent sun calculations use published solar geometry, terrain shadows and experimental heating/cooling; no external comparison service is required.
Map sources and offline limits
Topo: OpenStreetMap contributors and SRTM, styled by OpenTopoMap under CC BY-SA. Street: OpenStreetMap. Elevation, relief and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map; aerial imagery includes USDA sources. Data available from U.S. Geological Survey, National Geospatial Program.
Aerial imagery is historical, varies by area and is enlarged beyond its available detail. It does not supply current ground temperature or live tree shade. Alaska imagery includes third-party viewing restrictions. No downloadable basemap packs are provided. External map tiles use normal browser caching; the app does not bulk-download them. Map service availability is not guaranteed.
Your scouting information
Pins, notes, photos, and saved checks currently stay in this browser's storage. Map, elevation, and weather providers receive requests for the area you view; the hosting service receives the terrain, selected location, wind, time, and sampled weather inputs needed to calculate airflow. Pin names, notes, and photos are not included in airflow requests. This beta has no cloud account sync.
Temperature history and sensor files
Available station observations from the last 24 hours and hourly forecasts supply ambient temperature history. A station may be far from your ridge and cannot measure its local inversion. Ambient temperatures scale the magnitude of modeled buoyancy using absolute temperature; changes in regional air temperature do not determine surface heating or the uphill/downhill switch. Forecast temperatures are interpolated between adjacent hourly values. Missing readings use a 25°C reference for this magnitude scaling; no invented historical temperatures are bundled with the app.
Import shielded air-temperature CSV files through Temperature history & field sensors. Preview column choices, °F/°C, timestamps and sensor coordinates before confirming. Readings apply within 150 meters and only within their actual recorded time range, with interpolation across gaps of at most 15 minutes. Station history interpolation allows gaps up to three hours. These are provisional data-use limits, not guarantees that a sensor represents a whole slope.
Imports remain on the current device. Export sensor logs as JSON and import that file on another device; there is no automatic account synchronization. Historical readings do not train the model automatically or replace present-day weather. Ground condition and manual temperature are session scenarios.
Model basis: NWCG convective winds, NWCG temperature and surface heating, and NWS weather data. These sources explain the physical relationships; they do not validate this app’s coefficients.