How AirVeto renders the wind and tracking field.

Wind data

Wind vectors come from Open-Meteo, using the ICON-EU model (Deutsche Wetterdienst) at approximately 11 km horizontal resolution. AirVeto queries the gridded hourly product covering a rolling window of several days back and forward. At any given moment, the rendered field is typically on the order of tens of minutes lagged against the underlying model analysis, not the physical atmosphere.

Selectable altitudes: 80 m, 200 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km, 3 km, 5 km, 7 km (3 km default). Direction and speed are both interpolated from the model grid to the rendered map viewport; no additional post-processing is applied.

Cross-border inflow detection

Border segments on the EU’s eastern frontier with Belarus, Russia, and Kaliningrad are sampled at a configurable stride along the national boundary. Each sample computes the border-normal vector and compares it to the rendered wind vector at that location. A segment is marked orange when the wind vector crosses into the EU within 85° of the border-normal. Border polygons are static GeoJSON, not live-traced.

This is a directional filter, not a forecast and not a trajectory. Orange segments indicate only that the rendered wind is currently oriented to carry airborne objects across that segment — whether anything is airborne is a separate question.

Aircraft tracking (ADS-B)

Aircraft positions come from the public ADS-B receiver network. Coverage is near-complete above roughly 2,000 m across the Baltic ring (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Finland), deteriorates below 1,000 m over open water, and is sparse over Belarus due to low receiver density. Positions are cached region-wide with a time-to-live of approximately 15 seconds.

Satellite tracking (TLE / SGP4)

Satellite positions are computed client-side from public Two-Line Element sets using an SGP4 orbit propagator. No external tracking service is queried at render time. TLEs are refreshed on each session load.

Basemap

Vector tiles from OpenFreeMapunder its public licence. OpenStreetMap-derived data © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under ODbL.

Validation

Rendered wind direction and speed at the selected altitude can be cross-checked against authoritative aviation meteorological services — ICAO METAR/TAF data from national AMOs covering aerodromes in coverage (EYVI Vilnius, EPWA Warsaw, EVRA Riga, EETN Tallinn, UKBB Kyiv). Material divergence between the gridded rendering and a current METAR points to either model update lag or a local boundary-layer effect at the aerodrome — either way, both readings can sit side-by-side, and the AirVeto view stays the right reference for cross-border flow over the synoptic-scale field.

Specific point-trajectory work — "where exactly would this object land?" — is the domain of Lagrangian dispersion models like HYSPLIT and FLEXPART, which ingest the same kind of meteorological field that AirVeto visualises. AirVeto’s value is the upstream step: showing the field, at the altitude, at the minute, alongside the aircraft and AIS and incident records that contextualise it.

Known limitations

• Altitude sensitivity. Wind at 500 m and at 3,000 m can differ by tens of degrees in direction, especially around frontal passages. Switch altitude for the question you’re answering.
• Model-atmosphere lag. Open-Meteo’s gridded analysis lags the physical atmosphere; expect a smoothing timescale on the order of the model resolution (~11 km for ICON-EU).
• Cluttered ADS-B below 1,000 m. Below the radar horizon of coastal receivers over open water.
• Border segment density. Inflow detection is sampled along the boundary; very short segments under the sample stride may not surface an orange marker even when conditions are met.

What AirVeto is not for

AirVeto is not for aviation, navigation, or safety-critical decisions. It is a visualization product over public data, intended for research, journalism, and situational awareness of cross-border airflow. Use official authorities for operational decisions.

Editorial sourcing standards

Every named fact in an AirVeto incident reconstruction is sourced to a named outlet or official body. Preferred sources: national public broadcasters (Yle, LRT, ERR, LSM/LETA), national defence outlets (Defense24, Militarnyi, Kyiv Independent), and official statements from border guards, defence ministries, and presidential offices. A two-source minimum applies to every incident — AirVeto does not publish until at least two independent sources confirm the core event fact. Aggregators and unverified social-media accounts are not used as primary sources.

Wind figures cited in incident pages are sourced separately from the event reporting. Each figure names the meteorological model, pressure level, and UTC timestamp. No wind data is published without a traceable model output.

Corrections

Corrections are noted at the bottom of the affected article and the page’s dateModified field is updated — this propagates through the NewsArticle JSON-LD. Structural corrections (wrong location, wrong date, materially incorrect fact) are noted explicitly with the nature of the change. Minor updates (corrected URL, spelling) update dateModified without a separate note. AirVeto does not silently delete or overwrite published incident records.

Publisher

See the About page, press kit, and the incident archive for product context. Publisher information and sourcing standards are also at /about/author.