Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society

0 comments at 8:22 pm posted by Chris C

I just got rained on.  I could’ve seen it coming: so can you.  Keep our weather radar page bookmarked on your computer. Or iPhone or Blackberry (I understand you may need to press “J” to enable Javascript on a Blackberry).  Then you too can see when a storm is about to smash through the city, and about how fast it’s moving (and, therefore, how much time you have to find shelter).

If I had a phone with internet, I would’ve seen the above image about 30 minutes before the storm hit, when it was still 20km away: plenty of time to bike home from Heritage Festival.  And the festival organizers would’ve had some more time to warn all the vendors prior to the evacuation. (A number of vehicles exited via the pedestrian bridge into the dog park across the river.  Weird.)

If your poor mobile device can’t handle animated webpages, you can just bookmark this simple radar page, instead.  It just shows the latest radar image.

Oh, and if you’re technologically disadvantaged like me, you can always just look at the weather forecast beforehand, or even take a glance up at the sky.  A 30 degree summer day in Edmonton with stratocumulus clouds growing in the west is usually a pretty good sign that there’s going to be a storm in the afternoon or evening.  (I did actually see it coming for about an hour.  I just didn’t feel like leaving!)