25 comments

  • eddyg 13 hours ago

    I'd like something like this for week-long+ road trips.

    The day before we leave on a trip, I manually use 10-day forecasts from something like weather.com to help figure out what to pack and see if it's worth making scheduling adjustment. I'd like to know what the forecasted weather will be in each of the planned stops. High/low temperature and weather for each stop (we might be at a stop for many hours, so the weather can change), plus forecasts for any "overnight" cities, so we know what to expect while at the hotel/campground/etc.: at arrival time, the overnight conditions, and in the morning at expected departure time.

    I'm more concerned about weather during planned stops than "weather on the way".

    Something that integrates with https://furkot.com (the best road-trip planning tool ever!) would be great!

  • dominka a day ago

    Nice idea - I tested it on a route in Poland and it picked a pretty optimal path

    One thing that felt a bit tricky: if I want to leave "now" and quickly try different route variations, the departure time becomes outdated almost immediately. A simple "leave now" option could help here. Also would be great to see alternative routes to compare weather differences.

    Overall though, super useful tool. I can see myself checking this before longer trips

  • doctoboggan 2 days ago

    I’ve wanted something like this, but optimized for star gazing during road trips. I’d love for your tool to be able to tell me the best place stop along my route taking into account my expected travel location, light pollution, cloud cover, moon position, etc.

    I live and spend most of my time in cities, so long road trips are some of my bests chances for seeing good stars out in the country.

    Would your tool be adaptable to this use case?

  • wlesieutre 2 days ago

    Similar concept to Weather on the Way, for the iOS folks

    https://weatherontheway.app/

    Looks good and I like being able to browse the map on a desktop, though for actual travel use the app with CarPlay support obviously has benefits

    • imp0cat 2 days ago

      Or mapy.com and their "weather en route" - weather forecasting directly on planned routes.

      • vkatluri 2 days ago

        Hello,

        Yes, there are a few options available already. This was a passion project of mine, and I am reviewing all the use cases I can add. My primary aim was to have a website that works on both desktop and mobile. Did not prioritize mobile apps/CarPlay/Android Auto support yet.

  • max8539 2 days ago

    Just a week ago, I asked ChatGPT to find me something and found Drive Weather iOS app, which I started using. I was also thinking of building something myself, but this one is good enough. Have you tried it or any other similar apps? Why did you decide to build a new one and why is it better? (Building just for fun is an option as well!)

  • herpderperator 2 days ago

    Nice app! I see that the page title says "client" and there's the Vite favicon still, which you might want to fix :)

    I also think having a dropdown for the address search is somewhat expected these days, but is lacking here. That might be on purpose or due to a technical limitation, but just thought I'd mention.

    • vkatluri 2 days ago

      That's embarrassing... will fix the title and favicon.

      Thanks for the feedback regarding addresses, on my TODO list to add support for dynamic search.

  • skyberrys a day ago

    Nice tool, I like how it updates the weather based on the time you will be driving through it. When I've driven across the country on road trips we used flight planning software to dodge thunderstorms.

  • magesh_magi1 4 days ago

    I've applied for a patent for this very idea easily 10 years back but didn't get past my company. I've faced the issue when I travel from my office to home easily 1 hour journey without knowing when it'll rain where.

    Good execution. How accurate it'll be within city

    • vkatluri 2 days ago

      Not very accurate if it's short distances. What challenges did you face with the patent application?

      • magesh_magi1 a day ago

        I've Applied through my company they've rejected within the company itself as we are financial institution and this patent doesn't do much to the company.

    • nonameiguess 18 hours ago

      I consulted for an Air Force project that was attempting to add a virtualization layer to ease hardware refreshes for client devices using software that does exactly this (in a data center if they have network, but disconnected if necessary as well). I have to imagine commercial flight planning has needed to know weather along the route as well. It's hard to believe this would have been patentable given all the prior art.

  • emien 2 days ago

    This is really nice, cool idea!

    One thing I noticed: when I enter a destination that isn’t drivable like requires a flight, it returns OSRM API Error. Might be worth handling that case more gracefully or showing a clearer message.

    • vkatluri 2 days ago

      Thanks for catching this! Will fix.

  • big_toast 3 days ago

    I immediately did SF to Reno through sacramento and south lake tahoe. Wildly different even in four hours.

    A URL that persists the entered route might be desirable (especially to demo here). Otherwise I'm sure the additional features are endless.

    • vkatluri 2 days ago

      Thanks for the feedback. When you say wildly different, was the weather different? Or did the application behave differently? I will definitely consider sticky URLs!

      • big_toast 2 days ago

        It behaved properly.

        I pictured someone using it on a 2 week road trip. But even within a couple hours traveling in SF/bay area, it can be pretty hard to know what weather you'll encounter. Even if you're a local.

  • hahooh a day ago

    I would appreciate the option to set the distance unit to KM.

  • RyJones a day ago

    The route from Tallinn to Warsaw to Kyiv was pretty good! Nice tool.

  • bawana 20 hours ago

    St thomas to grenada gives ospm api error

  • addandsubtract 2 days ago

    I hate when there's "NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource" on my journey.

    • vkatluri 2 days ago

      Yikes. I wonder if I got throttled due to Hacker News traffic. Can you share more details?

      • addandsubtract 2 days ago

        Oh, turns out uBlock Origin is blocking requests to router.project-osrm.org. No clue why, though. I mainly use the standard lists.

        Also, one more improvement while I'm here; can you set the date/time forward by ~30mins? Currently, you always have to adjust it manually or else the date/time will be in the past.