How to Read Rain Forecasts

Image from the Recycled Cycles blog

As promised, here is a weather post about the rain. To any potential meteorologists who read this, please take note that I am a n00b and don't understand all the terminology or know the names of every single type of cloud. However, I am fascinated by how the weather works, love free data and need to know on a daily basis how wet my bike ride will be.

This post is broken into 4 sections:

1. Basic Forecast Reading
2. Satellite Imagery
3. Timing your ride with the radar
4. Model Output - It will change your life!

Basic Rain Forecasts

Here is a typical picture where I am disappointed in overall design. This happens all the time, an entire week of rain forecasted with the exact same picture icon of rain. The reason I'm disappointed is partly because it will rain a lot. However, the rain will be significantly different between each of these days and even within each day. Yet if you were to just look at the picture in the forecast you would think it'll be the exact same each day. Hardly! However, there are very subtle elements that actually show what kind of rain is forecasted.

%Chance of rain

This is actually quite useful and usually tells a lot of the story. 100% chance means you are going to get drenched - a massive storm is coming where it will probably rain rain most of the day. 70-90% means it will almost certainly rain but at times it may not rain that intensely. 40-60% usually means a sprinkle. 20-30% could mean a mist. 0-10% means mostly sunny!

Rainfall amounts

Here is the game-changer. As noted before we Pacific Northwesterners could probably have as many names for rain as Eskimos have for snow. There is pouring rain, windy rain, hailing rain, freezing rain, steady rain, bipolar rain, drizzle, sprinkle, mist and I'm probably missing some. Anyways, the distinguishing factor between most of these guys is the volume of rain that gets dumped out of the heavens. And the forecast actually reports these things.

Check out the Wednesday and Wednesday Night forecast. Exact same picture - exact same rain? Absolutely not! Wednesday says "Rainfall amounts around a half of an inch." Wednesday Night: "Rainfall amounts less than a tenth of an inch." Huh? How much is that? Admittedly it's a bit hard to convert a picture of falling rain into inches or fractions of inches of rain standing on the ground. So here is my nifty rainfall amount conversion scale:

< 0.1 inch: some rain, but not much. Safe for bicycling without fenders or rain gear.
0.5 inch: Pouring rain at times. Rain gear is a must even for short rides.
1 inch: TORRENTIAL RAIN
1-2 inches: FLOODING RAIN. Places without good drainage will flood. Landslides will happen on unstable slopes.
2 inches+: MONSOON RAIN. Ok, this entry is mainly to poke fun at Randy who claims that any rain storm he biked in had "MONSOON RAIN" quantities of rain. I did a little research and well again it's a little variable on what a monsoon is. It can range from the weakest Arizona Monsoon of 0.35 inches to the worst Bangladesh Monsoon in recorded history which had 13.4 inches of rain in 24 hours!

Timing Your Ride With the Radar

So, the next most advanced tool at your disposal is the weather radar. It shows a real-time picture of rain. Generally speaking, yellow stuff is pouring rain and anything more intense than that is rain you can go tell a story about. If you prefer not to ride in the rain, watch the weather radar and wait until the rain cloud moves away from your location. For example say you were at the red marker on the following maps:

Wait for it...

Almost...

Game on!

Unfortunately, it isn't always that easy and sometimes the raincloud will just stretch forever that you'll get rained on unless you wait for hours. However, the radar can even be helpful because sometimes there will be very short burst of rainclouds lasting only maybe 10 minutes with a gap of 30 minutes to the next raincloud which is often enough for a commute.

Satellite Images

I used to look at Satellite images, but have really started losing faith in them as an overall predictor of how much it will rain. There are kind of 3 types of rain cloud systems that come in and I've made screenshots of two of them.

Here is the "bipolar" type system:

All those little clouds probably mean something really fancy to meteorologists, but in general it usually means weather can be bipolar, ie raining hard for 20 minutes and then sunny for 20 minutes and then raining hard again. The radar is key for these kinds of clouds if you have a short ride.

Next is the "steady" system

This type of cloud usually will have a well defined start and end to the rain system. If you're lucky it will be a north-south type of cloud which passes quickly, if you're unlucky it will be an east-west type of cloud and if you're really unlucky it will be an east-west type of cloud that stretches all the way to Japan! Usually the rain is "steady" meaning it will rain consistently for the duration of the system. However, sometimes weird stuff can happen with these clouds where there is no rain at all. Here is a picture of the radar for the above satellite image:

Massive rain shadow over Portland! Why? I have no idea, but it was a dry bike ride.

The final system is the Cyclone the one that sorta looks like a hurricane. These are actually quite similar to the steady systems in how they dump rain.

Model Output - it will change your life!

Now the real game-changer I recently discovered is model output. I have found it to be very accurate. However, to me, to be very accurate is to predict whether it will be dry or have rain >0.1 inches, so ballparks work well for me. Once the rain is above 0.2 inches I could care less how much more because it will be a rainy ride regardless and the rainy clothing I have works in all levels of rain.

So, to take a look at this, go into the Wundermap and then check only the model output box, unless you like to clutter things. The default option is the precipitation view, "MSL". In the settings, it shows the start time of the latest model data in GMT or England time. So you have to do a little math, ugh. Then you have the option to increment the forecast in 3 hour increments. Or hit the play button, that is pretty cool too.

Update 2012-12-19!!

Recent articles including this detailed post from Cliff Mass have been confirming that the European model is way better than the North American model, so use the ECMWF as the model.

Example: Tomorrow I need to do a 2 hour ride. Should I commute to work in 2 hours or ride 2 hours after work? Let's check what the model says.

Here is the precipitation at 9am:

And here it is for 6pm:

Looks like 6pm will be the less rainy one!

The model data does go out to a maximum of 384 hours (16 days), but I start losing faith in it quickly until I don't even bother at the 6 day mark. The model data also has some cool stuff like temperature (map type "2mAG"), wind and precipitation type for each time period as well.

In Conclusion

So there you have my internalization of weather forecasts regurgitated to this blog as it relates to how I use data to determine whether I may or may not get rained on in my bike ride.

Let me set the stage for perhaps another post that I may come up with that is non-weather related. With that obvious radar image shot above I was waiting for the cloud to pass and then I would bike to Dave's Killer Breadquarters. However, I waited too long after the raincloud passed (partly in order to get the final screenshot) so although I bike to the Breadquarters in 27 minutes (even though Google said it would take 54 minutes), I was 7 minutes late after it closed.

Ah crap, it's after 11! Must sleep now.

Racing 2012 Schedule: Keep it fun

So, the schedules are up on WSBA and OBRA for next year, so it's time to plan. Going with the hindsight in my post-season reflection I will try to race less and/or not get as mentally drained. So as I make this schedule I'm going to try hard to also abide to the following rules:

1. No more than 5 weekends of racing in a row.
2. I must do the bolded races, unless injured or sick.
3. I am only allowed to get upset about poor performance in bold races.
4. Maximum of 2 stage races allowed during June.

February:

26: FHR or Eatonville

March:

4: Banana Belt
10: Sequim
11: Mason Lake
18: Banana Belt
24: IVRR
31-01: Rest Weekend

April:

3: First Tuesday PIR
7: Piece of Cake
8: PIR TT?
14: KVRR
20-22: Walla Walla
28: Eugene Roubaix or 28: OVRR & 29: Volunteer Park Crit

May:

5: VCRR or Rest Weekend
12: OBRA RR Champs or Ravensdale or Rest Weekend
13: Forest Grove Omnium RR
19-20: Tabor Circuit & Forest Grove Omnium or Mutual of Enumclaw
21-27: Week Long Rest

June:

2: Hammer Velo Crit or Ballard Crit
8-10: Mt Hood or Wenatchee
15-17: Capitol Stage Race or OBRA RR Champs?
23: Ironclad Crit
24: Albany Crit
29-01: Elkhorn or Tacoma Twilight or Rest Weekend

July:

7-8: HDO or 8: Lake Oswego Crit or Rest Weekend
14: Gresham or Redmond Crit
20-22: Cascade Cycling Classic
28: Swan Island Crit
29: Vancouver Crit

August:

4: Franz
11: OBRA Crit Champs
18: Giro di Portland
25: Rest Weekend
31-02: Eugene

Winter of Code

Well, look what happens. I write a blog post about how I'm going to tell you all how to read the rain forecast, and then it goes along and doesn't rain for weeks!

However, being a true Northwesterner this doesn't stop me from staying inside looking at computer screens working on some nerdy awesome new web developing stuff.

Weightlifting

I have been disgruntled with all weightlifting data management schemes I have used before. Paper got old and crumply, this online site that tracks my biking has a poor interface for weightlifting and this app doesn't have a way to output the data. So, I made my own weightlifting website. It is honestly just a simple site, but the cool thing I like about it is that I made some reports sections that analyze metrics about how much you increase (or decrease) your lifts over time. Check it out here:

http://www.evansiroky.com/weightlifting/pumpiron.php

Scooter Lyrics via XSS



Who is Scooter you ask??

ONLY THE MOST SUCCESSFUL GERMAN BAND EVER^[citation]!!

Yes, the band comprising of HP Baxxter, Rick Jordan and even formerly Ferris Beuller has been producing hits in Germany since 1994 with incredibly energetic tunes that have inspired new dances and hate from elitist producers. And the icing on the cake is of course the completely confusing transcendent lyrics in most songs.

This was the source of inspiration for implementation of a very brief, but far reaching idea in web programming. For everyone who doesn't have any interest in web developing, you can skip the following lines of reading. A while back, I came across this brilliant article written by a wiseman from ancient times. My mind was blown! Just think of the possibilities for this! Entire javascript libraries returning any kind of content can be built for use on any site without cross-domain drama. Wow! So, the first idea that came up was making a widget for accessing some random Scooter lyrics. Thus I present it to you below:

click the button...

I am making it a point to include listening to some Scooter as a part of my pre-race routine this coming year.

TrafficBug

And of course, there is work coding. I'm pretty much working as a software engineer now at my job and we are getting super close to releasing an app to the iStore. This app will allow people to save trips (any trip in the lower 48!) and receive alerts on whether there is an accident or if a faster route is available. We've got our own routing engine and ultimately we're going to hook up these real-time traffic models we're developing to the app, so it will be super killer. For more info check out my company's website at http://mygistics.com/. Angel investments encouraged!

Weather Forecasts: An Intro

OK, just a warning, I'm going to be starting a non-bicycle-racing series on the weather. I'm doing this for a few reasons:

1. There isn't really anything else exciting to blog about right now.
2. It's the time of year when weather matters
3. A lot of people are utter n00bs uneducated on how to read weather forecasts.

Weather does matter a lot in terms of bicycling because sometimes it can absolutely miserable and other times it is amazing. But if you're a bike racer or determined bike commuter, you have to be able to train and ride in any type of weather.

Now there seems to be plenty of articles out there on how to ride in any kind of weather, but I haven't seen much in terms of understanding the root cause of all your weather-related bicycling problems - the actual weather. Well, there is my favorite weather blog: Cliff Mass Weather Blog, but that's really only for the true weather nerds.

In daily life I frequently hear people saying stuff that clearly indicates they haven't taken a detailed enough look at the weather forecast. Here are some examples:

• "what the heck, it was like sunny this morning and now at 1pm it's all rainy! arrgghh!"
• "there aren't even seasons anymore!"
• "It was a frickin' MONSOON STORM out there today!"
• "where the heck is summer??!?!!?" <- when said before July 5th any year.

I'm going to share some of my slightly-more-educated-than-the-normal person knowledge I have about weather which has mainly come from anecdotal observations, my internal reasoning and plenty of hours surfing weather forecast websites. I aim to divulge some information that is almost always true, but of course when predicting the future there is no guarantee of truth.  I am drawn to forecasting in general because my day job is associated with the transportation forecasting business so I really appreciate how well they have got down their forecasts.  The short term results from their forecasts are actually quite accurate nowadays and it really inspires me to try to do as well in the transportation forecasting area.

I'm obviously going to focus on Pacific Northwest weather since that's all I know. I hope to cover all seasons of the year ultimately in this series. The next post will focus on the most exciting, favorite, happy and joyous weather type of the Pacific Northwest that has earned it a national reputation that draws people from around the world:

The RAIN!!

But as a precursor to all this, I present you with the weather forecasting website I use. Please go visit it and become familiar with it, because I'll be referencing it a lot in this series of posts.

http://www.wunderground.com/

Life After Racing

Long time, no post. Well, that's cause I haven't been obsessively racing to the point of mental exhaustion for some time now. I was about to write up a little bit on how people who continue their racing season with cyclocross are wackos, but I'll just leave it at saying I'm once again glad I'm not getting my bike all dirty, riding through mud and instead sitting in my somewhat warm condo typing on my computer.

Anyways, it's like November now and um, well, I guess I'll just highlight some stuff that happened between the end of bike racing season and now.

The first thing I realized when I stopped racing bikes was that I had no life besides racing bikes. All the people I hung out with happened to be in the bike race I was racing in. And then I had all this free time once I stopped riding bikes all the time. However, the work picked up at my company so I was sorta good there. I also joined this small group from my church, so hopefully I'll have some actual friends in a bit.

I also rediscovered that I had a fixie! Oh man I was riding that around like the hipster I've always wanted to be once I found that out.

Then I took a vacation to Portlandia wherein I tried to do a bunch of things that people who live in Portland do. I only bought groceries from Co-ops, I only ate out at food carts and microbreweries, I was vegan for a whole week, I played blacklit minigolf, I visited new parks and explored. However, a lot of this got boring by myself. So then, I met up for a round of urban golf. Twas a lot of fun!

Photo from MAJOR DUFF's blog

.

BUT THEN, all of a sudden, there was an alleycat happening up in Tacoma put on by 2nd Cycle. So I cashed in some Amtrak Guest Rewards points and headed up. The evening before the race, I made sure I had an excellent pre-alleycat-race diet which involved getting bought a bunch of beers at the Parkway from my sister's new boyfriend and playing pool unitl 1am. I also left the bartender a hefty $1 million bill tip.

Well, the strategy payed off immensely! I was battling it out on the streets after getting off to a bad start wherein I was last place. We went from People's park to the Red Hot, then to this house I'd been to before at a 4th of July party with 40 people on the roof (I left because I was afraid it would collapse, but it didn't). Then to Vassault park, then to the SR 16 bridge park wherein I was now 2nd place. Then down to Bob's Java Jive and then I miraculously passed the first place guy on the way to the 48th street bar & grill even though we both said we took the same route yet didn't see each other. Then to someone's random house and bombing down to The New Frontier via Pacific (on my non-brakeless fixie). I made a number of mistakes on my route choice, but in the end it was better than all 2 other racers so I got first place! Woohoo! Finishing off yet another season with a win!

Well, after all this, it was a bit of a blur as I was working somewhat furiously to help get a demo ready for my company at the biggest Transportation Technology Conference of the year. We did end up getting a decent demo ready, but gosh it would be a lot cooler if we had a true product - which we hopefully will before TRB in January. As a part of this, I was sent out to the actual conference in Orlando! This was pretty sweet. The conference went well, here is a picture of my boss demoing a navigation console that picked up an alert from our traffic systems and a recommended reroute.

Photo from ITS World Congress Facebook page

After the conference I went down to Fort Lauderdale and fell absolutely in love with the area. Before I had always thought it would be a sprawling and depressing place, but after visiting the area I changed my mind. Firstly, the Everglades are now a nationally protected area, so sprawl won't go further out into it. Thus, growth seems to be limited to the already dense area along the roughly 20 miles width of the east coast. Secondly, the weather is amazing. 70 degrees at night and 80ish in the day. Shorts and shirts or no shirt at all! Thirdly, the beach is an awesome place to play. I saw lots of babes in bikinis, surfers, kite-boarders and I even saw a guy with a harpoon gun go out for a swim. Fourth, it is flat which combined with the warm weather makes for easygoing bicycling.

I was so sad to come back from the south that my body gave me a cold upon returning to Portland.

Reflections on last season

OK, so I suppose I have to reflect on what happened last season bicycling. Lots of people said I did great and all. On the one hand, yeah I did ok picking up a win and a bunch of 2nd places and do have enough points to be a Cat 2 racer (but not enough for a forced upgrade OBRA and WSBA!!). Yet on the other hand, as my coach said I went through a bit of a funk in the later part of the season starting after the Franz Bakery Crit. To finish bike racing season off, I proved to myself that I'm a decent bike racer by getting top ten at the Eugene Celebration.

The biggest takeaway I think I can take is that bike racing is a big mental game - even more so in a long term sense. Bicycle racing and really anything in life is a sport where those who do not die do decent. A while ago, I went to one of my sister's piano recitals when I was still in high school. I always thought it was so annoying hearing her play that stupid piano and the same songs over and over and over and was even bored again when she played the same songs at the recital. Like I hadn't heard that before!! Uuugggghhhh. Then after she was done she got an award from her piano teacher saying she was in the top 5 of all her students in playing the piano and there were like 50 piano players there and even more shocking that she had close to the best record for practicing playing the piano.

What?!?! How could that be? All she did was what she was assigned to do. 45 minutes a day 6 days a week it seemed. So what? Couldn't anybody do that? Apparently yes, but not everybody did! In fact most students didn't! The only people better than her were the piano players truly obsessed and in love with playing the piano.

The exact same thing it seems applies to bicycle racing and I suspect every other area of life where work is involved. I had a really good base training season wherein I rode every assigned workout except when I was sick. My season leading up to Franz Bakery was great. Cat 3 was a bit more challenging, but I found my way to the podium three times. After the Franz Bakery Crit and the Swan Island Crit I let my mental game get out of whack. I was no longer excited about bike racing as much as I was addicted to it and felt like I had to do it and succeed in it to fulfill myself as opposed to be happily motivated to have a fun time no matter the result. I'm guessing that the latter is the more sustainable attitude to have.

Now, another tangent is the financial toll that bike racing has taken on me. Good lord! The stage races cost a lot of money and carbon wheels aren't cheap - even on a team deal. The time I could be spending doing other things is quite a bit too. I have a number of web design projects that I just don't get around to because of all this bike racing.

So really, the conclusion I'm reaching is that I need to race less next year. And more importantly don't race small-time races if I don't want to. It's hard for me to say I'm giving up on some pie-in-the-sky goals I have, but maybe all I need to do is give up on the disappointment if I don't reach goals immediately. There will always be Jeff Hoovers who can execute these things nearly perfectly with natural ability, but bicycling is something I can't do that in. Come to think of it, there is nothing I'm naturally talented in doing except continual learning. As long as I push myself to try new ways to do things and not get in funks when I don't succeed I think I'll be allright.


And one final thing since some people ask me. The Dating Season is going iffy. I just haven't found a 5'11" vegan babe who has won at least 2 Cat 1/2/3 ladies races and is completely horny for me. Actually a few things are going on I suppose. I'm not so skilled in meeting women nor do I fully elicit the values that women find attractive and then I'm scared of approaching women and then question whether I'd be happier developing websites and playing open transport tycoon or talking to women about how cute their ugly and smelly pet dog is.

Conference Conversation Translation

This has nothing to do with bicycling, but I really want to quickly share this story to make fun of myself.

Background: I sort of snuck into a hospitality suite that I wasn't invited to because nobody knows me. However, a lot of my supervisors were invited there, so they just told me to come.

Conversation:

Me: (I see a guy hand someone a business card with a company name I recognize).
Me: Hey cool! You work for Company X! I wrote a java SOAP client that fetches data about region y from one of your servers!
Man from Company X: Oh, that's great I didn't know we had servers that did that in that part of the country.
Me: Well you do! (I say this while smiling).
Man from Company X: Well, here's my card.
Me: Thanks for the conversation.

Translation out of business code speak:

Software Engineer who snuck into hospitality suite (SEWSHU): Wow someone I might know! I did something ultra-specific related to your company!
Vice President, Director of Company X (VP): WTF are you talking about?!? There are hundreds of people working for me, I haven't the foggiest of what you're talking about nor should I.
SEWSHU: I'm just glad to be getting some free food and talking with someone!
VP: Here's my card, now get lost so I can talk to people who actually have control of budgets over $2 million.
SEWSHU: I'm thirsty. Oh, free water!

Bike Racing Season Over

Dating Season Begins! Yes ladies that's right, this man is on the market if you are looking. I like long bike rides on the beach, hanging out with friends on bikes, and living life to the fullest (while on a bike). I'm looking to date a bike (or two or more!). Nah, in all seriousness I am looking. I even made an online dating profile here.

So yeah, bike racing season is over. Yeah, I don't really count cyclocross or races in California. Eugene Celebration Stage Race is really the last big race of the year it seems. Last year I did quite well getting 2nd in the prologue hillclimb and eventually 4th overall in the 4/5s. This year I was expecting a bigger challenge.

I scored a rideshare down with the Cat 3 OBRA Hillclimbing champ and was stoked that he ended up being my 30 second guy in the prologue. I was keeping up until the hill started and then didn't see him until the finish. It also didn't help that my real derailleur was skipping between 4th and 6th cogs. However, I still finished with a decent time of about 12 minutes and good enough for 6th place. The road race I attacked way too much, didn't realize that 2nd and 3rd in GC broke away and then didn't have the magical intuition to know who's wheel to suck in the field sprint. Oh well.

I also like Eugene because it is a really hippie kinda town. Although it's smaller than Portland I'd argue that per capita it is more hippie. It's really easy to find vegan food and lots of people bike! Case in picture:

At the time trial I was a bit worried about losing a lot of time. However, I pulled out a surprising 6th place finish getting a time two minutes and eight seconds faster than last year. This year I had carbon wheels, aero bars, a TT helmet and a skinsuit. But what matterred by far the most was that I went in with a plan to average a specific speed in mph. I didn't even look at my heart rate, I just looked at speed. I found it way easier to force myself to suffer to reach a certain speed than heart rate. It also helped that I was warring with the guy behind me. He had a full TT setup, disc wheel and all and passed me shortly after the final turn. However, I kept passing back this guy probably 3 or 4 times. At the final 500k I pushed it into 29mph and passed him for the WIN, no enjoyment of being an ass, NO - the avoidance of being humiliated by being passed in a TT.

The crit was like the PIR (Portland PIR) of Eugene. So dang flat and straight and no crappy pavement. Yet there still managed to be a crash which kinda got onto my nerves and took away my aggression to find a good wheel for the final sprint. Gotta work on these kinda sprints for next year. After this I had some lunch with the Brownies and then headed back home.

Well, that's about it for this post. I might get around to doing a racing season reflection post or something, but I'm too busy trying to meet a hot babe and planning a vacation to Portlandia at the moment.