We've revived our Cycling App of the Week regular feature especially for this handy little weather app that links with your Strava account... we think it's great, let us know if you'll be using it yourselves!
Six reasons to use Strava
Cycling app of the week: what3words
What is it?
Klimat adds weather information to the description underneath your Strava activities. You simply head over to klimat.app, enter your log in details and then all your subsequent activities will display the info from then on. You'll see on my 'Morning ride' to work below that underneath the description is all the basic weather info from the ride, including temperature, precipitation, humidity and wind speed/direction.
You can of course view weather post-ride if you use a device such as Wahoo's Elemnt Bolt or the Garmin Fenix 5 watch that plots the data, but you have to go to Strava's desktop site to view it; therefore Klimat was made to be able to see basic weather information at a glance on mobile. In the settings on Klimat's website you can choose what information you want to see, and in what language you want to see it. You can also retrospectively edit the text on Strava after your activity has been uploaded. At the moment the info won't appear on historic activities, but as a bodge you can add the time of year/month or location to the title and Klimat will see that the activity was updated.
Developer Scott Ferguson tells us he's also working on some new features, but these are a few weeks away at the time of writing.
How can it help me?
Ever rode into a monster headwind for your whole ride, therefore the average speed looks a bit disappointing on Strava when in fact you've put in a huge old effort? This app can help with that of course, as it shows the wind speed and direction at the beginning and end of your ride; such as my trip from Bristol to Bude a couple of months back, for which I was desperate to let the world (or at least my 50-odd followers) know that much of it was straight into a headwind. On the other hand, if you spot a particularly impressive-looking KOM you'll be able to identify if it was heavily wind-assisted, assuming the KOM holder has Klimat and hasn't doctored the information!
What makes it unique?
It shows simple weather information in your Strava news feed, and as far as we know it's the only app that can do that for you.
Where can I get it?
Head over to klimat.app to connect it with your Strava account; or you can also find it on Strava's list of apps under the 'Visualizer' section here on the desktop version of the site. It's free to download, but you can support the developer and ensure it stays running by making a donation here.
After cobbling together a few hundred quid during his student days off the back of a hard winter selling hats (long story), Jack bought his first road bike at the age of 20 and has been hooked ever since. He joined road.cc in 2017, having previously worked for 220 Triathlon magazine. Jack's preferred events are time trials, sportives, triathlons and pogo sticking (the latter being another long story), and on Sunday afternoons he can often be found on an M5 service station indulging in his favourite post-race meal of 20 chicken nuggets, a sausage roll, caramel shortbread and a large strawberry milkshake.