Bike commuters are weather nerds
Commuting cyclists seem to take extra interest in the weather.
Exhibit One
The other day the clogwog noticed that some dude at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics appears to be a real weather nerd, with particular interest in things climatic in Melbourne including some pretty sweet graphs of Melbourne temperatures.
The fact that I just said “sweet graphs” in reference to weather data should tell you something.
Exhibit Two
Earlier last week a fellow salt miner who rides to work came over to me and asked if I was a weather nerd. I had to admit that I had a handful of weather related bookmarks in my web browser, so I guess I am at least inclined towards being a weather nerd without being too hardcore.
We then proceeded to have a good look at the temperature and wind data for the previous few hours.
Exhibit Three
Then last Thursday I was having a chat with some other bike commuters and when the topic of weather came up the conversation became particularly nerdy. I think it was woowoowoo who said that on moving to Brisbane some years back he’d given up his weather watching ways only to pick up the habit again on return to Melbourne, so maybe there are more weather nerds in Melbourne? Then again, Chris L has been talking about the weather recently, and I’m sure it doesn’t take the extremes of drought/flood to get a Queenslander to take an interest.
Conclusion?
Apart from being a great relief to me that I’m not the only one, all of this weather talk set me wondering that there must be considerable overlap between commuting cyclists and weather nerds. In fact, it seems quite likely that you could become a weather nerd through being a commuting cyclist. And it stands to reason doesn’t it? We have an immediate and practical interest in what the weather is doing—especially at the start and end of the working day.
So, are you in the overlap zone between bike commuter and weather nerd?
[Image credit: Inclement Weather
by gamenerd on Flickr]
More on related topics
- Riding to work and rain
- Tempestuous weather and mad cyclists
- Autumn cycling: the best, the worst
- Bikely keeps getting better
- End of fair-weather cycling
- Posted by Treadly and Me at 01:54 pm
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Heh, guilty here
Weatherzone is where I spend most of my weather watching time, they have lots of good data. They have a desktop widget thingy that while cool, refused to work properly on my main machine. They also have some feeds you can embed in other sites like say sydneycyclist and melbournecyclist
Yep, weather nerd. I have three BoM pages bookmarked at work… :P
Great stuff!
Mike
We were taking anemometer readings yesterday on Buninyong circuit. Maximum 27kmh gusts on top of the mountain. Must of been hell for the riders.
Got a wireless weather station. Been a lurker on the austpacwx list for years. Hah! You’ve only just caught up to the rest of us.
Robin (rjh) used to be at Monash Uni, before returning to Canadia – thus the obsession with Melbourne weather :)
Its my preferred “Watch the graph go crash” site too
Yeah, I’m a weather nerd. I haven’t gone whole hog and put an Internet-connected weather station together yet, but that’s only because I spend too much money on my bikes.
…and I’m with Fritz – the plans for installing a weather station keep getting bumped by bike bits (and PC bits…). My Mac Dashboard has weather Widgets for Melbourne and Famagusta, Cyprus (need to know what the weather’s like where my Dad is, innit…), and BOM is bookmarked and the 64km radar loop regularly consulted, especially in the last 30 mins before I leave work…
Oh yes! I wrote about this last year.
I’m so glad there are so many other nerds to support me now that I’ve finally come out of the closet. :-)
64km radar loop? You should see the rockin’ 512km with 11 image loop!
Wonder if weather nerds cross over with advocacy nerds and general bike nerds? Must be a sub-set out there somewhere…
I can see some kind of Venn diagram in the works here. I’ve no doubt that it will be at least as complicated as Barry and Kim’s Knowledge Nation chart of a few years back…
It’s a little bit different up here — the rain areas on the weather map are actually the target at this time of year. Getting rained on is far more pleasant than the alternative. And even then, most of the moisture is going to come from perspiration.
I actually rode through a mini-cyclone about four years back. The wind gusts were “officially” 135km/h that night. The ride home was like having a bucket of water tipped on you for about 15km.
So in Chris L’s case, it’s a matter not so much taking an interest in the weather as having it thrust forcefully upon you.
I might be able to claim “weather geek extreme” status — I have a complete site setup to maintain current weather data from a fair few sources including the BOM about the Tweed Coast area. http://www.4tfingers.biz/
Currently in the process of trying to get hourly data into a googlemaps wp_plugin… but this is not the place to talk geek?
I agree with Chris_L a nice bit of rain during a ride is something to look forward to at this time of year up here! For example last nights 2.5hr ride took me through plenty of stretches of road where it had only just been raining. In these areas the pavement was awash with puddles and loose gravel. But, I missed it! The persperation and road grime wheel spray was not to be washed off by the wished for showers during my night ride.
PS: It rained as soon as I was home… lucky? Not!
Oh yeah, I think that qualifies for extreme status. But the big question for TCT is: what came first, the cycling or the weather nerding? (I think I can guess…)
yep, besides for bike riding i also use it to predict surfability of the weekend. now looking at getting my own weather station. a wireless one to connect to a website would be best.. so not only weather nerd, but computer nerd as well …
At first glance, I think the weather nerd-computer geek overlap is a bit more obvious. But the cyclist-weather nerd overlap appears to be just as strong. As for the cyclist-weather nerd-comptuer geek overlap…
‘Treadly and Me’ that depends upon how far you go back in time, first came the bike then the surf, with the weather following closely there after. But the bike continued through the 70s and 80s…. it is only in the recent past (~2000) that nerd has been added to all the above…
I reckon that supports my hypothesis that being a cyclist can turn you into a weather nerd.
Yep- looks like the weather geek-bicycle geek phenomena is international! Hope your summer’s been as mild as our winter.. Branson in North Carolina