How To Track The Weather At Your Destination

Weather plays an important part in the travel industry.  It can often be the deciding factor in the quality of a vacation.  In some extreme cases, storms or poor conditions can actually cause would-be vacationers to cancel their trip or at least reschedule for a different time.

How is it possible to keep weather from destroying your well-planned vacation?  It is not completely possible, but arming yourself with information can be a huge step in a positive direction.  Here are some tools for becoming a weather savvy traveler.  From knowing the climate at your destination to keeping your eye on the weather for your flight, these tools can take the weather worries out of your travels.

There is really nothing that you can do about storms or weather events that cause delays at airports.  During the colder months, for example, flying in the Northern half of the US and in many airports that are located at high altitude can often mean that your flight will be delayed because of snow and ice.

If this is the case, keeping tabs on your flight status is important.  You can keep up to date with the status of flights on the day of your flight by using the FAA airport status page.  This map uses color coding to show the average delays for flights flying out of major airports in the US.  In addition, each major airline has a flight status application on its web site.  Fliers simply have to plug in their flight number and they can check for updates as the time for take-off approaches.  If there is bad weather in the region, you can check frequently, as schedules can change by-the-minute as the air traffic controllers and runway maintenance people adjust to poor weather conditions.

Climate data can give you a broad picture of what the weather is like at your destination even before weather reports are available.  This can help you avoid unpleasant weather and choose the best time of year to visit if the dates of your travel are flexible.  Even if they are not flexible, climate data can give you a picture of the weather situation at your destination so that you can be prepared and pack appropriately.  For example, you might expect that your winter trip to the US Southwest (say, Phoenix or Mesa, Arizona) will mean warmer weather.  While temps are still pleasant in the part of the country during the day, the mercury can drop to near freezing at night time.  Your hot weather desert clothing, shorts and light cotton shirts, will not keep you warm.  Sources like Wikipedia and Weather.com can at least give you monthly temperature averages, which give you an idea of what to pack.

iPhone applications like Flight Tracker and Airport Status can help fliers keep up to date on their status of their flights.  There are plenty of applications out there that can do similar tasks, but these two are the “right price” at only $0.99 each.  Airport Status can give fliers up-to-the-minute delay information for airports.  It does not have exact information for flights.  Flight Tracker can give minute-by-minute updates of arrival and departure information for domestic flights in the US.  There are plenty of other options when it comes to keeping track of flight information.  But most are more expansive than the two apps mentioned above and not worthwhile because all the information that your would need can be found on airline web sites or be seen through the two $0.99 applications.

WeatherBug is one of the most proven applications for both computers and smart phones that can give accurate weather forecasts.  It is a good choice for getting accurate information on the weather at any location, including your arrival and departure points.  Again, there are more sophisticated applications and sites out there, but for pure weather information, without any time-wasting extras, this is a solid choice for both your laptop and your smart phone.  If you really want to kill some time, download some game applications.