Products / Windline

Windline

Active Live forecasting for cycling tours Web and iPhone

Wind for a whole multi-day tour, timed to the hour the group reaches each stretch of road.

Relationship
Windline is an independent product created and operated by Cross Constellation.
Canonical site
windline.tech
Status
Active public product
Product colour
#635BFF
01 / 8

The one-sentence definition, without comparison or superlative.

What it is

Windline turns a folder of GPX routes into one live link. It reads the distance, climbing and bearing of every stretch of road, works out when the group will reach each one from the start time, riding speed and stops, and forecasts the wind, gusts, rain and heat for that moment. Because it compares wind direction against road direction, it reports headwind and tailwind rather than a compass bearing. Riders install nothing: the link opens in any phone browser and re-forecasts from the newest model run every time it is opened. There is an iPhone app for riders who want it on the home screen, carrying events, day forecasts with wind arrows drawn against the road, route import from Strava and Ride with GPS, and the Windline 1000 by ProLend.

02 / 8

The operating frustration that existed before the product.

The problem we encountered

A weather app forecasts one place at one time. A tour covers two hundred kilometres a day, through different weather, at different hours, and the wind at the start tells you nothing about the climb at eleven. The question gets asked in every tour group chat the night before, and nobody has a good answer — the honest reply to “thirty from the west” is “at the start, or at Sutherland?”

03 / 8

The founder’s account, in their own words.

Why we built it

“The question gets asked in every tour group chat the night before a stage and has never had a good answer. Windline was built to answer it on a real tour — Pont Drift to Cape Town, thirteen stages, 2,093 kilometres, in October 2026 — and ridden over every one of those stages before being offered to anyone.”

Wes Thomson, Founder

04 / 8

How the first problem expanded into the current product.

What the product became

  • Wind resolved against road bearing, so a stretch reports headwind, crosswind or tailwind instead of a compass direction.
  • Forecasts timed to arrival rather than to the clock — pace, climbs and stops are modelled, and wind is blended between hourly readings to the moment the group gets there.
  • Four models side by side — ECMWF, GFS, ICON and a blend — with disagreement surfaced rather than averaged away.
  • One link per tour and one per stage, opening in a phone browser with no account and nothing to install.
  • An iPhone app carrying the same forecasts, with route import from Strava and Ride with GPS.
  • The Windline 1000 by ProLend — a free global December challenge, and the product’s first event of its own.
05 / 8

Genuine dogfooding. Deployed uses only.

How we use it ourselves

  • It was ridden across all thirteen stages of the Pont Drift to Cape Town tour — 2,093 km in October 2026 — before being offered to anyone else. There is no staging environment for a headwind. Deployed
  • Every rating on the public tour page is computed in the visitor’s browser from the current forecast, so the product is demonstrating itself rather than showing a recorded result. Deployed
  • Windline runs the Crossdeck Web SDK on every surface for analytics, error reporting and acquisition sources, with Crossdeck’s own consent panel handling the opt-out. Deployed
06 / 8

The relationship graph, rendered from the register.

How it connects to the portfolio

Windline uses

  • Windline feeds livedot — Windline sends live rider positions and its wind forecast to livedot, where anyone can follow a rider through an event. · Evidence
  • Windline uses Crossdeck — Windline uses the Crossdeck Web SDK for product analytics, error reporting and acquisition sources across every Windline surface. · Evidence

Products that use Windline

  • RunFast shares an engine with Windline — RunFast and Windline run one forecast engine, tuned for running pace and for riding pace respectively, and share a Strava connection and live-tracking server. Neither product is built on top of the other. · Evidence
07 / 8

Attributable support for everything claimed above.

08 / 8

Where to go for the product itself.

Official destinations

windline.tech remains the commercial destination. This page is the origin and relationship source.

Stories

Where Windline comes up.

  • The second product is found by operating the first
    A forecast engine built to put wind on a cycling route turned out to be most of what runners needed, pointed at a different problem. Not a pivot and not a feature — a sister product, on one engine, for an enemy that is not wind.
  • A thousand kilometres, counted for you
    Most December challenges hand you a weekly leaderboard and leave the sum to you. The Windline 1000 counts every ride from 16 December, puts your running total on Strava, and sends a finisher card on 1 January.
  • Wind against the road, not the town
    Every tour group chat asks the same question the night before, and the honest answer to “thirty from the west” is “at the start, or at Sutherland?” A forecast for a place cannot answer it. So we built one for a road.