When I used to live in England one of the common topics of even short conversation was always the weather. Over there it was raining very often so every window of sun during the day was really appreciated, even celebrated. Moving forward to these last years my life took me back to Tuscany, I no longer live in England, and here I set up this business doing bespoke bike tours. I also integrate that part of my job with being a photographer in the cycling industry.

For us cyclists, practicing an outdoor activity, knowing if during the day it will rain, or there’ll be wind or it will be warm is very important. These are factors that can really affect our rides.

Find me one cyclist that is not looking at the sky as soon as he puts his nose out of the house just before jumping on the bike.

A simple practice like this one can be very effective. Knowing how to read different types of clouds we see or even the color of the sky, can help us a lot in determining how to dress up or what to expect from the day.

With this article I would like to make you more aware about the topic of weather in relation to cycling. I strongly believe that meteorology should be a subject to be taught at school to kids. It is important to be able to read the sky and all the signs nature gives us to best interpret its behaviour.

A typical sky you would see when a storm is approaching.

If you have to commit to a bike ride under any weather scenario (for instance, if you are only free during the weekend), my approach would be to start your ride directing immediately to a place where you can have the full picture of the sky from all sides, trying to understand the wind and the direction and shape of the clouds. Doing so, you could anticipate any rain to come and stay away from bad weather.

If you live along the coast instead, you need to be aware that when the wind is blowing from the sea, there is more chance of some rain. The evaporation of the water from the sea in fact really facilitates the forming of clouds and storms.

In these last years we have seen a sort of tropicalization of the weather, and it has become difficult to determine and define the beginning or the end of a season. It is not unusual to get pretty mild days with temps reaching 14 °C in January, but to also have sudden floods during summer time.

Here in Tuscany, for instance, November used to be a very rainy month, but in the past few years it has become a kind of a stretch of summer, a sort of “Indian summer”.

Just a few days ago I was telling a friend how I avoided a hail storm, saving my car and myself from possible damages, just by setting up an alert on a weather app and checking the wind cards in advance.

A very good website I always check on Monday when I try to plan my riding calendar for the rest of the week is Wunderground.com. Over there I am a big fan of the 10 days graph where I can understand pretty immediately if it will be sunny on a specific day, if it will be a windy day, the strength and the direction of the wind and the mm of rain.

10 days forecast graph with Wunderground.com

Wetterzentrale.de, on the other hand, is a renowned German weather portal that offers free access to a wide range of forecast maps, as well as global and regional numerical models (such as GFS and ECMWF), archive data and observations. It is widely used by enthusiasts and professionals alike for analysing weather developments and ensemble charts ('spaghetti plots'). In the way I keep it I visualize the range of temperature I will face during the upcoming days with the spikes on the second line that is marking the rain for that specific day. A very tall spike, for instance, means a lot of rain.

Temperature and precipitation graph with Wetterzentrale.de

Ventusky and Windy are probably the most used and intuitive apps for weather forecasts. They are both very user friendly and easy to use either from a phone or from a laptop. Ventusky, from a PC, lets you visualize many more functionalities compared to the ones from the smartphone.

Windy is an app I really recommend spending a few euros monthly for unlocking the premium features. Between them all I really like the short term weather and rain prediction.

We all use Strava or Komoot to plan our rides, don’t we? What if I told you that there is an app that is able to tell you and predict the best time of the day to do the route you have in mind?

If you haven’t tried it yet, I would firmly recommend downloading Epic Ride Weather, a real game changer. It will help you maximize the tailwind on a ride, but will also suggest the most suitable time -based on weather conditions- to do your training. You just need to upload your .gpx track and the app will do the rest.

If your device is an Hammerhead Karoo, you then can also have real time weather prediction on screen, but if you are curious to know more on how this all work, I leave you with their intro video below, so you can better understand the potentiality of this fantastic app that can interface with any mapping software.

Although weather cannot be predicted 100%, apps are a great way nowadays to prevent ourselves from getting into scenarios we don’t want to, considering riding a bike also teaches us to respect our own limits.

Before checking any app though, always make sure you open a window or a door, and just look at the sky.

You might not be able to understand if a storm is coming, but at least you take a deep breath. And that sometimes, it's enough!

Cycling in Tuscany: How to read the weather forecast and ride with confidence.

Val d’Elsa gravel cycling experience