Most accurate weather forecasting
 

Besides looking up, does anyone have any favorite weather prediction resources?

This seems to be quite the global forum (first post here) but I thought it might still be interesting to hear people's preferences for determining what gear to have at the ready, maybe a decision as to ride or not to ride?

Me personally, I draw the line at lightning. Unless I'm caught in it, I tend to try to avoid riding if there's a storm in the offing.

Any current radar feed will do. If I see green, yellow or red nearby, I look closer and try to see where it will be when. Sometimes, I'll gamble and think I can beat it. I'm running about 50/50 on that. :)

It may be a little gimmicky but the Wunderground app for IPhones (and possibly all other smartphones) has this feature called Smart Forecast where you can set parameters like, temperature range, wind speed, chance of precipitation, snow etc to define your ideal and acceptable conditions for biking.
But all said and done, the vagaries of weather are hard to predict, specially in New England where they say that if you dont like the current weather, just wait. It will change.

Welcome to bikeforums! I was just thinking about this this morning, as the weather forecast seems to have completely changed overnight. As I went to bed it was predicting an afternoon of rain, but this morning it was saying mostly clear.

You mentioned bf's international reach, and I don't know how wide-spread certain weather services are, but in the last few years I have come to rely on the Weather Underground app for Android.

Many other weather seem to dumb-down the weather, or try to make it relevant to certain lifestyles, or just want to be a platform for advertisers and maximize visitor clicks.

Over the years the Weather Underground App has remained mostly straight forward. Twice it seems to have veered off course and then returned to it's more direct approach.

I like Weather Undergound's 5-day forecast chart that simultaneously shows predicted temperature cycles, predicted precipitation chances AND EXPECTED ACCUMULATIONS, and expected wind speeds and directions throughout the day. They also have a weather radar view on the same page.

As you read the commuting forum at bikeforums you will find many different approaches to dealing with the weather; everything from avoiding it to riding no matter the temperature or conditions.

Anyway, I like the Weather Underground App and then based on what I think the weather will be I decide how to dress for the ride. And for those of us who live in areas with wide seasonal weather variations, dressing for different temperatures and conditions can be as much of an obsession as cycling itself.

Again...welcome!

AccuWeather.com
 

I like AccuWeather.com. I find that it has a very accurate hourly forcast and the information bar that displays "rain starting in 93 minutes " really good for my commute.

Every morning I check wunderground.com on the ipad. I just leave it in the web browser so it just comes up when I hit the power button. Its been pretty good so far and also allows you to change the weather station.

I use The Weather Channel App in conjunction with my local TV station. The app is good at telling what is comming when. I like the hourly forecast. I do give it a about an hour either way margin for error.

You can really only rely on next day forecasts. Anything further out than that is a crap shoot. Most weather sites are accurate enough for next day forecasts. I tend to use wunderground or just ask siri "What's the weather supposed to be like today."

If it's cloudy or shows precipitation, I bring my rain stuff.

Then again, I bike everyday, regardless of weather, so it doesn't really matter to me.

In the U.S. I used to use wunderground, until they were bought out by weather.com and put so many gadgets on the page.


weather.gov is now my favorite site for long- and short-term forecasts. Most of the other sites, such as the weather channel and accuweather, take the weather service forecast and tweak it a little bit. The only weakness is that they don't pull from the various TV station radars, so when the local government radar is down (typically for maintenance, but it broke in advance of a line of severe storms earlier this year), I have to play "go fish" with other sites.

Weather underground.

I think they are the best at micro forecasting and have the widest number of weather stations (network of on line weather stations from users - for example, my weather station is part of their netork) of anyone. We've found their micro forecasts to be the most accurate of any especially with respect to precip.

J.

I used to love Weather Underground, but over the last couple years their website has gotten so bloated with banner ads and other crap that the site takes forever to load on my home computer or phone. I'd happily switch to a leaner weather service if it were as accurate.

$5 a year gets rid of ads. It's a pittance for the quality of the service.

J.

Fair point!

If I can, I'll take a bus or find a ride if it's raining and I don't need to be anywhere at times people aren't going places (ie. staying out past 5 pmish). But most of the time I bring a poncho and wait for the weaker spells, and ride slowly with lots of lights and a yellow safety vest. The worst weather I was in was late at night during a tornado watch. When it got really nasty, I went inside walmart, got some apple soda and the ny times, and waited it out for about 45 minutes or so. Riding in the rain is always an interesting experience.

since we are approaching thunderstorm season any forecast isn't as good as a radar loop to show exactly where the rain & lightening is. don't know where you live, but if you're in the US, this site can help you

Intellicast - Current Radar in United States

click the PLAY ANIMATION button
you can also click the map on your location & it will zoom in. then click the PLAY ANIMATION button again

Weather.com has, by far, been the most accurate for Oregon and Wisconsin weather, I have noticed.

The Nasty Weather Service.

I find that The Weather Channel is the most accurate. The other factor is to check the weather as close to ride time as possible. I. check the night before ride day, and then again in the morning. It's very common to have the weather change over night.

Accuweather - they guess and miss as much as the others, but have a convenient hourly forecast with wind force and direction.
Maybe there are better, but I never bothered to look any further.

So true. Sometimes ‘adventurous’ :-)

When I think about it, I just google 'weather <zip code>' and just use the nice little graphic that Google puts above all the links. Very clean and simple.

But because I never think about it, I'm experimenting with using IFTTT.com to send me an email whenever rain is in tomorrow's forecast. So far I've gotten 1.

http://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/...in-alerts.html

I use the Dark Sky app

There is a cool app that crowdsources pressure readings from barometers in smartphones running the app. So obviously there are problems in that if there is not a crowd of people running the app on phones w/ barometers, there is not much certainty in the data. I am also bummed that when I look up which phones have barometers, they generally have other problems that count against them for me more than the barometer counts for me. But it's a great idea!

Bookmarked that. TY



I think I'm going to give the weatherunderground app a try too. Today was disappointing as there was always the threat of a storm but it didn't materialize.

Is there a weather service that indicates the accuracy of their predictions ?
Does any service say " yesterday it rained", three days ago we projected "no rain", the keep score of their successes ? I don't know of any who do ?
For weather prognostications I look at the sky, listen to birds/beasts and get feed back from a cranky left knee- my own success rate is 90%.

Because I spend so much time outdoors (biking, paddling, camping) I have become a weather geek. My favorite must-have weather apps are RadarScope Pro (real-time radar and lightning strikes) and The Weather Channel app.



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Intellicast stopped updating their iphone app and it was replaced by an app called Storm, which I love. The hourly forecasts show both percentage chance of precipitation and accumulation. This tells me if I should bring gear for a light drizzle or a downpour.

Dark Sky is good if your timing is flexible. It gives a graphic representation of precipitation probability for the next hour and is based only on GPS location. I can leave early or late from my work (and home), so I can wait until a shower passes or leave early to beat a storm that is rolling in.

Weather underground is too busy.

The thing to understand about most all these apps....They're basically all made by the same company.

Weather Underground, Intellicast, etc.....all are owned and backed and developed by The Weather Channel alias "The Weather Company". If Weather Channel would stop spreading their resources out across 5+ different apps (and website domains) under different subsidiary monikers-they could make something amazing....which I think is what they're moving towards.


Accuweather is the only other commercial weather domain I can name offhand that isn't owned/operated by The Weather Company.

Three sources...

Weather Underground gives hour by hour temperature, wind, and precipitation in table form (not just "chance of rain" for the day which is useless), and a rain forecast. It's not always perfect, but you can watch the radar too. Monday I rode home on wet roads, but the forecast was right enough that it wasn't raining enough to change clothes. Weather Underground is also notable for having automated crowdsourcing, anyone can hook up their little weather station to the network, and they have a lot of widgets on their page asking if their forecast is correct.

The second is the Facebook page of NWS Sacramento who do a pretty good job telling the story of the weather

The third is this Tahoe ski blog, which does a good job talking about storms coming in during the wet season, and the climate for the water year. Not intended for a Sacramento rain storm forecast but it amounts to one nevertheless.
https://opensnow.com/dailysnow/tahoe

Weather forecasts are a heck of a lot more accurate than they used to be.