WeatherBug weather
information for cycling

Posted on October 28, 2008

The Weather Bug gadget in five different views

Temperatures play a major role in cycling garment selection. Too much and you'll find yourself sweating and having to remove your gloves midway. Too little and the ride becomes very uncomfortable.

Wind speed and direction are important too. While the windchill factor is commonly understood, cyclists have to take the direction into account. Cycling at 30kph against a 30kph headwind results in a net windchill effect of 60kph, driving effective temperatures further down.

Which is why a tool reporting temperature, wind speed and wind direction is important. The default weather sidebar gadget in Windows Vista publishes temperature but nothing about wind. I stumbled upon WeatherBug's sidebar gadget that shows all the information I need and more. (A similar gadget for Mac OS X and other platforms are available as well.)

While setting up the gadget, it needed to know the desired weather tracking station. The closest available is Waterloo Well, which is, well, in Waterloo, 10-20 km away. There is a closer station at Guelph Turfgrass. I emailed WeatherBug about the closer station. I wonder if they'll respond?