Sometimes I find usual weather websites inadequate to determine whether I should ride... I was wondering if any site gives something like 'dry ice probability index' or 'possibly snow that will stick on the road'..!

 

thats a rockin question... ill be watching this thread closely in case any good comes out of it !

 

nothing really biker oriented, since it would be impossible to check roads everywhere for ice...
i have found that mozilla firefox has an addon that puts the weather below your screen, and it has been pretty damn close and changes frequently to support the climate

 

Well one wouldnt have to check for ice... just report on the possibility.
like they have probability of precipitation, air quality index, arthritis index etc etc on the websites today.
I myself dont know what atmospheric conditions can cause black ice, but there's probably a set of things, like mositure saturation, previous snow fall, temp etc which can be correlated to black ice, similarly to mist/low visibility rain, roads wet enough to cause spray and other conditions that make biking dangerous... any atmospheric science guys here?

 

The Weather Channel Desktop is perfect. It runs in the background automatically when your computer starts just like AVG or anything else.

The icon in your taskbar is simply a blue square with the temperature in it. Double click it for local traffic, radar & maps and a 10 day forcast that so far has been spot on. I've been using it since Octbober and have yet to be surprised by the weather. Even better, I have been prepared whena kick *** riding day is gonna pop it's head up in the middle of the week. When it comes, I'm alread ready already.

Here is a link below, try it. The computer I run it on is a 2GHz P4 with 768MB of DDR2. That's a pretty weak computer and you can't even tell it's running.

http://www.weather.com/services/desktop.html

EDIT: For ice, just check your humidty, last 24 hours of precipitation, overnight and daily temps and road locations (bridges and open, 2-lane country highways). Didn't you guys listen in school? Haha, just kiddin'. Use that link, as a rider, you'll dig it.

 

The folks at NOAA (National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Admin. ) have a grat website ! You could probably use them to paint your own picture of a well-known terrain.

 

When the weather is known to be crappy, like it is this time of year, I don't look at forecasts in much detail. It's either gonna be cold or it's gonna warm up and just about any site or TV channel can tell you that.

But we're rolling into spring, where the temps may be warmer, but rain will be the issue. I ride to work almost every day if the weather is gonna be nice enough. I don't necessarily mind the rain if it's warm enough, just I need to be prepared so I don't walk around the office dripping. So I check 3 different places because none of them are even close to 100% accurate. I check http://www.accuweather.com and http://www.weather.com and lastly, I watch the local morning news before I leave. I've found that if they all 3 agree, then that is 100% gonna be the weather (this doesn't happen very often). I put more stock in AccuWeather than Weather.com but I use the TV as a tie-breaker. TV will tell you it's gonna rain today, but if you get off at 3pm and it doesn't rain until 6pm, then you wasted a good chance to ride that day.

To answer the original question, I haven't found any sites that will give probabitlity of ice on the roads. I would think that if you knew enough about humidity, dew points, ant temps you could gather that info. Unfortunately, I'm don't know enough about it to predict that.

Here are some sample screen shots of the info from AccuWeather:

This shot tells you the probability of ANY precipitation in the next 24 hours, broken down in segments. You can also choose to see the probability of certain types of precipitation, such as rain, snow, or ice:


Here's a different screen showing all type of precip % in 3 hour increments:


This screen gives you the humidity, dew point, etc. in hourly increments. I suppose if you knew enough about the weather, you could get some idea if there is a good chance for Black Ice or whatever other particular thing you were on the lookout for:


Weather.com gives you similar screens, but I personally prefer to start with AccuWeather.com:




Using a combination of all 3, I am generally more accurate than any one of them at any given time. People at work actually use me to tell if it's going to rain during work hours. They'll come to my office and say "you rode today but it say's it's gonna storm". I just tell them, nah, no storms till 7pm. I've even had a few people bet me that it will rain before 6pm. I have yet to lose one. If you do it daily, you start to get a feel for who is mor on target and you'll begin to know which source to trust more and which one you trust the least. Plus, if the weather is gonna be nice in the morning and nice later in the evening and just rain say around lunch time, I'll still ride. I don't like to commute in the rain, so if those times are good, the other doesn't bother me.

Sorry this post got so long, just when I ride to work, I like to know what to expect. This doesn't mean I've never been surprised and got stuck in a downpour on my way home.... I have. Those times you just gotta laugh and go with the flow.