A FREE Smartphone App that Warns you of Immediate Rain Showers Ahead - Ride your Bike like a Professional Aviator flies his Aircraft
This is one of my favorite and most useful smartphone apps.
It will help you to ride your bike more often. That will save you time and money, and it will keep you healthy.
The app′s name is RainAlarm and you can access it online here https://www.rain-alarm.com/
Use the RainAlarm Smartphone App
While RainAlarm works well on your desktop computer, you must download it to your smartphone. It is free.
Don′t confuse it with other similar apps, here is its PlayStore/AppStore logo:
Once you have the app on your smartphone, it is a great help when riding your bike.
Say Good-Bye to Conventional Weather Forecasts
While conventional weather forecasts try to predict whether there will be rain or not during a part of the day, the RainAlarm app specifically warns you against immediate precipitation ahead of you. For doing so, the app checks the current weather radar every few minutes in an adjustable radius if rain clouds are approaching.
This is exactly the way how aviators check the immediate weather conditions around them. Have you ever wondered how a commercial aircraft pilot can fly around thunderstorms in a pitch-black night? Try out RainAlarm and you will find out yourself.
Where the RainAlarm Data is Taken From
The rain radar data comes from governmental weather services that make their weather data available to the public for free. This currently works in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain (including the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands), Slovenia, Croatia, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, USA, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Argentina, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei.
It is not a coincidence that it is the more developed countries in this world that give data that has been collected using taxpayers money back for free, while governments of the more underdeveloped world would charge the public again for accessing this data.
RainAlarm displays Real-Time Rain Showers Ahead
While you can program RainAlarm to issue a warning message if there is precipitation around you, I never use this feature.
I usually check the RainAlarm screen before I ride my bike. It would show a map of the terrain around me. You can zoom in to your present location. You would see color coded clouds on the map if there is rain around you. Light rain has a blue or green color while heavy rain is red. The clouds are moving and this is how you can see whether the rain moves towards you or away from you.
A greyish coating on the map indicates that there is no radar cover. Light gray means a temporary failure, whereas dark gray indicates a permanent lack of coverage.
That′s it.
Example
Here is what the RainAlarm app showed me a few weeks ago when I stepped out of our house.
One could not really see with the eyes that there was rain nearby, as the sky in Singapore is sometimes covered with clouds, although there is no rain. But the RainAlarm app clearly showed that I was surrounded by heavy precipitations. I was just located in the midst of a pocket without rain.
The rain clouds in the app were moving slowly but steadily southwards, which means that the rain was coming towards me.
I left my bike in the shelter and took the car, which was good. After two minutes on the road there were raindrops on the windscreen. I was kept dry.
And here is a little screencast video about this very useful app:
Call to Action
Become playful again.
Get your bike out. Download the RainAlarm app and open it. Ride to the next rain area, stop at a nearby café and wait until the rain clouds have moved over you. Then ride back home.
Enjoy!
Martin “Never get Wet Again” Schweiger
Visit my site, www.IP-Lawyer-Tools.com, for similarly useful tips and tricks that help IP lawyers saving time and money.