How to plan a road trip
The order of operations: set the route, read the summary, find the worst point, move the departure before changing the road.
Wayther Driving tips
What the weather does, and what you can do about it
Driving tips for bad weather.
One page about the order you check things in, and four about a specific kind of weather. Each covers what the condition actually does and which parts of a route it bites hardest on — because the decision is never “is it windy” but “windy where, and when I get there”. None of them is about technique: technique has a ceiling, and the ceiling is reached long before the interesting part.
Where to start
A procedure, then four conditions
If you have a trip in front of you, the first one is the page to read: it is about the order you check things in, which is the part that actually changes decisions. The four under it are lookups — one per condition, each about where on a route it costs you the most.
Driving in high wind
Where wind bites hardest on a route, and why the hour you leave matters more than the way you drive.
Rain on a route
Why rain is the easiest condition on a route to plan around: a shower has a beginning, an end and a direction it travels in.
Fog and visibility
Two kinds of fog with opposite answers, and why the change in visibility matters more than the number.
Snow and mountain passes
Why a pass is not the weather of the town at its foot, and why the best hour to cross is later than you would guess.
What the four have in common
Different weather, the same two levers
A gust on an exposed ridge, a rain band crossing the middle of the day, fog that will not lift until the sun is up, and a pass that is four degrees colder than the town at its foot look like four unrelated problems. They are not, and the sameness is the useful part.
In every case the weather is a property of a place at an hour. You cannot move the place, and you cannot move the weather. So the only two things left on the table are the hour at which you drive through and the road you take to get there — and the first is nearly always cheaper than the second.
That is why each of these guides spends most of its length on where the condition bites hardest on a route rather than on what the condition looks like. Anyone can tell you what wind does to a van. What is worth knowing is that the same 60 km/h gust is nothing on a wooded valley floor and the whole problem on a bridge, and that the problem is at the 180 km mark and not the other side of the city.
Which is the argument of the planning page, in sequence, with the order of the steps. Read that first if you have an actual trip; read the condition you are worried about if you do not.
The vocabulary
The words your forecast is written in
Every guide above uses terms without stopping to define them, which is how a forecast reads and not how a page should. The glossary explains all fifteen of them — what a gust is, why a pass is colder than the valley, what freezing rain does to a road, what “visibility” means on a route — and where each one appears on your screen.
It is the reference layer under these guides rather than a page to read first: the wind guide sends you to gust and why a tall vehicle feels more rather than restating them.
The other axis
The same four conditions, by vehicle
Weather does not scale with your vehicle, and it does not fail the same way twice. These pages plan a whole trip for one kind of vehicle rather than one hazard across all of them.
RV and trailer
Gusts on bridges and exposed ridges, icy passes, and the overnight temperature where you stop.
Truckers
High-wind stretches for a high trailer, snow on the passes, and the alternative routes that avoid a delay.
Motorcyclists
Wind direction, rain timed to the mile, and the temperature where the climbs start.
Cars, buses and shuttles
Commuting runs, shuttle rounds and plain road trips, with the full feature list on the home page.
See all of it on your own route
Every condition on these pages, forecast at every point along your route and timed to the hour you reach it. Try every feature on a random route, free.
Forecasts come from Apple Weather and cover wherever Apple Weather is available, in metric or imperial units, up to 10 days ahead. Wayther plans a trip; it does not navigate and it does not report closures. Keep your maps app for directions, and follow official weather warnings and road closures.