jawn
04-28-2007, 06:54 AM
Nothing sucks more than rain/snow/other annoying weather ruining your BMX experience. It's not like the news/radio is very accurate or in-depth either. For instance, I live in Sydney, but the area that's considered 'Sydney' is so huge that weather forecasts for 'Sydney' are often pretty irrelevant to my part of town. But there's a great weather resource most every country has, with some pretty nifty features. I'm talking about government meteorology (weather) bureau/department sites.
These sites are THE BEST resource for predicting weather. Sure, at first glance they make look to sport just the usual forecasts and temperature predictions, but dig a little deeper and you can find some very handy tools, like animated rain radars. Here's an example:
Thunderstorms (and the rain that goes with them) were forecast for the city of Melbourne, Australia on this particular day. And rain it did in Melbourne itself. But have a look to the left - in Lismore for instance it didn't rain at all! The weather was quite ride-able in that part of town. If I lived in the city and was bummed that I couldn't ride, I know where I'd consider travelling to.
Observations are also a handy tool. There's more to temperature predictions than you'd think. For instance, it could be 100'F, but quite pleasant. Or it could be 90'F and quite uncomfortable. Observations help you to predict how pleasant the heat/lack thereof really is:
We often use the air temperature as an indicator of how comfortable we will feel when involved in sports or other physical activities. However, the air temperature is only one factor in the assesment of thermal stress. In climates where other important factors, principally humidity, can vary widely from day to day, we need more than just the temperature for a more realistic assessment of comfort. However it is useful to be able to condense all the extra effects into a single number and use it in a similar way to the way we used the temperature. The Wet Bulb Globe Temperature(WBGT) and the Apparent Temperature are indices which attempt to do this.
Another great feature of these govt. meteorology sites is the wealth of information they have about meteorology. Bit cloudy, but not near a computer? Learn to differentiate rain clouds from fine-weather clouds! Want to crank up the accuracy of your area's rain radar? Read up on how to identify certain behavioural patterns from the radar images, or find out how distance/altitude/airbrone objects affect the radar images. You'd be amazed at what you can learn about our climate. No longer will you be satisfied to know whether it's going to rain or not. Find out where, for how long, how intense, how probable it is, how it will interact with the air & apparent temperatures etc.
Here is a list of govt. meteorology sites for various English-speaking countries (as well as Italy, home of the only other language I know):
www.bom.gov.au (http://www.bom.gov.au) - Australia
www.weather.gov (http://www.weather.gov) - United States of America
www.metoffice.gov.uk (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk) - United Kingdom
www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca (http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca) - Canada
www.metservice.co.nz (http://www.metservice.co.nz) - New Zealand
www.weathersa.co.za (http://www.weathersa.co.za) - South Africa
www.meteo.it (http://www.meteo.it) - Italy
(more here (www.bom.gov.au/info/weatherkit/section3/agencies.shtml))
Happy riding, folks!
(quite coincidently, I finally got around to writing this after about 6 months because it's bloody raining where I am [but it is going to clear today so I'm happy])
These sites are THE BEST resource for predicting weather. Sure, at first glance they make look to sport just the usual forecasts and temperature predictions, but dig a little deeper and you can find some very handy tools, like animated rain radars. Here's an example:
Thunderstorms (and the rain that goes with them) were forecast for the city of Melbourne, Australia on this particular day. And rain it did in Melbourne itself. But have a look to the left - in Lismore for instance it didn't rain at all! The weather was quite ride-able in that part of town. If I lived in the city and was bummed that I couldn't ride, I know where I'd consider travelling to.
Observations are also a handy tool. There's more to temperature predictions than you'd think. For instance, it could be 100'F, but quite pleasant. Or it could be 90'F and quite uncomfortable. Observations help you to predict how pleasant the heat/lack thereof really is:
We often use the air temperature as an indicator of how comfortable we will feel when involved in sports or other physical activities. However, the air temperature is only one factor in the assesment of thermal stress. In climates where other important factors, principally humidity, can vary widely from day to day, we need more than just the temperature for a more realistic assessment of comfort. However it is useful to be able to condense all the extra effects into a single number and use it in a similar way to the way we used the temperature. The Wet Bulb Globe Temperature(WBGT) and the Apparent Temperature are indices which attempt to do this.
Another great feature of these govt. meteorology sites is the wealth of information they have about meteorology. Bit cloudy, but not near a computer? Learn to differentiate rain clouds from fine-weather clouds! Want to crank up the accuracy of your area's rain radar? Read up on how to identify certain behavioural patterns from the radar images, or find out how distance/altitude/airbrone objects affect the radar images. You'd be amazed at what you can learn about our climate. No longer will you be satisfied to know whether it's going to rain or not. Find out where, for how long, how intense, how probable it is, how it will interact with the air & apparent temperatures etc.
Here is a list of govt. meteorology sites for various English-speaking countries (as well as Italy, home of the only other language I know):
www.bom.gov.au (http://www.bom.gov.au) - Australia
www.weather.gov (http://www.weather.gov) - United States of America
www.metoffice.gov.uk (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk) - United Kingdom
www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca (http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca) - Canada
www.metservice.co.nz (http://www.metservice.co.nz) - New Zealand
www.weathersa.co.za (http://www.weathersa.co.za) - South Africa
www.meteo.it (http://www.meteo.it) - Italy
(more here (www.bom.gov.au/info/weatherkit/section3/agencies.shtml))
Happy riding, folks!
(quite coincidently, I finally got around to writing this after about 6 months because it's bloody raining where I am [but it is going to clear today so I'm happy])