Regular rvtravel.com reader, George Bliss, makes regular forays that can take him nearly 2,000 miles in his rig. Hitting a major snowstorm or high winds could quickly turn his travels into something other than the relaxing, fun sort of activity that the RV industry likes to portray. So George is a man who's figured out how to do his trip planning quickly with the aid of the Internet. George swears by a couple of different sites, and here they are:
Weather Underground Severe Weather
In addition to providing weather reports for cities around the globe, this Internet service also allows U.S. travelers to get a satellite-eye view of severe weather across the country, or narrowed down by region, even state. Just pop onto the site and you'll immediately have a graphic representation, lit up with color (or not, depending on weather conditions) that reads out any weather alerts currently in place from the U.S. Weather Service.
All sorts of weather conditions are reported, from snow, rain, high winds, flooding, tornadoes, whatever weather conditions that are extreme are posted in real-time. See www.wunderground.com/severe.asp?
Wind Map
Take a couple of scientists and give them an artistic bent, and what’s the result? Several, really, but the one we'll focus on is Wind Map, the product of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg. These two, self-described "pioneers in data visualization and analytics," take hourly-updated wind data from the National Digital Forecast Database. Put down in graphic format, they give an amazing way of looking at anticipated windspeeds anywhere about the country.
Click on an area and you can zoom in for a closer look, and see whether you want to set tire in the spot. Check out hint.fm/wind.
There's another excellent one for wind called sailflow.com which originally was intended for boaters but also provides the same information for land. The nice thing is that it gives you an animated look at the wind predictions for the next week and spaced just a few hours apart for each "slide". Try this example for a look and click on the > symbol to set in motion. http://sailflow.com/map#35.117,-79.44,7,2
ReplyDeleteI use weatherundergrounds trip planner cause it shows the winds and weather all along your trip. I hate driving our Class A in winds so that is my main interest besides temperatures.
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