A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about a simple riding tip on checking the Weather Radar before your rides on questionable rainy days and that I have recently been using the MyRadar App on my smartphone for this purpose. Well, I have another App to yap about this week.
Here’s the thing… What weather/ride stat is missing on your bike computer (even gps based) and on most weather apps on your smartphone? Well, I’m sure that the title of this post has given that one away. It’s Wind Direction and Wind Speed.
I love my gps based bike computer (it’s a Garmin Edge 800) and I love to monitor all sorts of stats on my rides (I’m kind of a geek that way). I check out my speed, average speed, and trip miles of course but I also keep tabs on my heart-rate, my current grade, my total uphill and downhill distances, my max speed, what direction I am heading, check my odometer occasionally and even have a window set to show the time of the sunset everyday. That’s really only some of the stuff I use but you get the idea.
The one element that was always missing though was Wind Stats (wind speeds and wind direction). Of course, I will usually have an idea about which direction the wind is coming from after riding for a while and changing directions a few times. I also watch out for the flags that I pass on my usual route.
One of the problems is that the wind is not always consistent and can be variable at times so, even though you may know that the overall wind direction is from the North (for example) it may not be as obvious if it is NNW, NW, NNE or NE. Like I say, I’m geeky that way and I just like to know exactly where the wind is coming from ~ and the speed while I’m at it.
So I did a App search recently for “wind direction” and “wind speed” apps and similar search terms but mostly just got a ton of weather apps. Well, I don’t really need another weather app (the one that comes standard on the iPhones is usually fine for my purposes (along the the MyRadar app)) but most either do not have wind stats or if they do it can be hard to find.
AccuWeather weather app with Wind Stats
So I downloaded various free weather apps and checked each one out. Most didn’t have the wind stats that I wanted so I just deleted them and moved on to the next one.
Finally, I found a weather app that displays the wind direction and wind speed very prominently on the main page when the app starts up. The app is called AccuWeather and, as you can see on the sample screen that I’ve included here, it is associated with ABC 7 and Accuweather.com. This is a free app so there is also some advertising at the top (that I removed in the sample).
The overall wind direction is prominently displayed and you also get the wind speed and wind gusts speed. I don’t always check the wind direction before my ride but as I start riding I start to wonder about it. I always have my phone with me so when I really need to know, I just pull over and check the wind speed and direction. This is also good to check on longer rides when the wind may increase, decrease or shift a little during your ride.
I would prefer this stat to be easily accessable on my bike computer but I understand why this would not typically be available on one. You would pretty much need a “Smart Bike Computer” meaning it would be able to connect to the internet via a cell signal. I still love my GPS based bike computer and it gives me almost all the stats that I need but maybe soon we will also have the option to get a “Smart” bike computer. With that said, I’m sure that they will come out very soon and this post will be obsolete. 🙂
Of course, I am aware that there are Bike Computer Apps for smart phones too, which kind of qualifies as a Smart Bike Computer but the bike computer apps that I have used (I’ve only tried the free ones) are just not as good, robust or as complete as a good GPS based bike computer (imo). Besides, I don’t really want to have my phone clipped on to my handlebars for all of my rides ~ I use it for enough other things and I would worry about it getting broken (the regular gps bike computers (Garmin models anyway) are made to be pretty rugged).