Epic Ride Weather: Local Inspiration, Global Reach
Epic Ride Weather: Local Inspiration, Global Reach
Stories / Published: Jun-05-2019
Epic Ride Weather is an app available on iOS and Android. It analyzes routes created in the cycling and running app, Strava, and provides riders with real time and predictive weather information - temperature, wind, and precipitation are calculated for the route, based on time and speeds at which the individual will be riding.
Ever skipped a ride due to the threat of rain, only later to wish you’d actually gone since the weather turned out to be fine? How about unexpectedly getting caught in rain 2 hours into your ride, arriving home chilled to the bone? Epic Ride Weather was created to solve this problem.
Epic Ride Weather connects with Strava to pull in your previous rides and routes, and delivers a personalized weather forecast for the duration of your next ride. The magic of the app is in combining your previous rides with hyper-local weather forecasting. By using timing from a previous ride, Epic Ride Weather uses your precise expected location to produce a forecast for every 10 minutes of ride time to show you how the weather will change during your ride.
Epic Ride Weather shows temperature, precipitation, cloud-cover, and our favourite: wind speed and wind direction.
Epic Ride Weather is used by thousands of cyclists worldwide, including many of the UCI World Tour teams. In fact, Epic Ride Weather is an official supplier to Team Jumbo-Visma. You can hear from their DS (Directeur Sportif) on how they use Epic Ride Weather to inform their race-day tactics, hydration and nutrition. But, did you know that Epic Ride Weather was created right here in Vancouver?
Vancouver can serve up some wet weather and changing winds, with many microclimates due to the influences of the ocean and mountains. It’s from this backdrop that a local cyclist, David Green, created the app. David rides road and mountain, with some commuting and bike packing too. We talked to David to find out what inspired him to create the app:
Riding from Vancouver to White Rock frequently as a fun way to get home from work, I realized that I was often travelling through four or five different weather systems in a single ride. After researching modern forecasting services, DarkSky stood out due to their use of artificial intelligence to provide much more precise forecasts than we’re used to. I prototyped an app to combine multiple forecasts with routes from Strava, and found that I was getting out more often, and having more fun!
We’ll be using Epic Ride Weather for our local rides, including our Wednesday night Stanley Park laps. We hope you’ll join us. You can download Epic Ride Weather from the App Store and on Google Play. Try it out and let us know what you think!
