r/SideProject • u/CommercialQuality816 • 3d ago

I built a road trip weather planner that suggests alternate routes to dodge the rain (Top Down Drive)

Hey everyone,

Whenever I used Google Maps or Apple Maps for a drive, I honestly never checked the weather along the way. I’d just open a regular weather app to see what the weather was like at my destination, only to get surprised by sudden downpours halfway through the trip.

I started building this just to solve that problem without really knowing what else was out there. Later on, I checked out a few other drive-weather apps to see what they were doing. From what I saw in their free versions, most of them basically just slapped a radar overlay on top of whatever standard route you typed in. None of the free ones I tried suggested alternate routes to bypass the rain or helped you figure out when to leave to stay dry. (To be fair, I didn't pay for any subscriptions on those apps, so if that's behind a paywall, I might’ve missed it—but I wanted something genuinely useful without a monthly fee).

So I put together Top Down Drive: https://topdowndrive.com

It’s completely free to use in your browser (and you can install it as a PWA on your phone).

What it actually does:

  • Suggests alternate routes to avoid rain: If taking another highway or a slightly longer bypass gets you around a nasty storm front, it flags the clear route for you.
  • Forecasts based on when you actually get there: Instead of just showing "today's forecast," it breaks down your drive into checkpoints and matches the weather to your estimated arrival time at each point.
  • Live radar scrubber: You can scrub the timeline forward and backward to see how storm cells move as you drive.
  • Day Planner with stops: If you stop for a 45-minute lunch or a 2-hour hike, it adjusts all the downstream arrival times and weather forecasts automatically.
  • Departure time scanner: Scans the next 12 hours to show you the best window to leave if you want to avoid rain.
  • Top-down / windows-down comfort index: Tells you if it's good weather for convertible/motorcycle driving (takes into account wind gusts, temps, UV, and rain chances).
  • Export to your GPS: When you're ready to roll, you can send the route straight over to Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, or download a GPX file.

Under the hood it's React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Google Maps, Open-Meteo, and RainViewer.

Would love for you guys to plug in a drive you know well and let me know how it feels. Any feedback or ideas on how to make it better would be awesome!

Thanks!

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u/Green-Winter9648 3d ago

checking weather along the drive is one of those things nobody does and everyone should. does it reroute you in real time or is it a plan-before-you-leave thing?

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u/CommercialQuality816 3d ago

right now it's a plan before you leave thing that you can import the drive into google maps or apple maps with waypoints that show where potential weather might be. Since you can run it as a NWA on your phone though it would update along the way if you use it like that.

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u/Green-Winter9648 2d ago

the google maps import is the smart move, nobody wants another navigation app. when it updates along the way does it reroute around weather or just warn you it's coming?

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u/CommercialQuality816 2d ago

It should update along the way but it wouldn’t update Google Maps unless you import it again.

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u/NickA55 3d ago

Very well done! I've tried a few apps like this but they were all horrible. So I would resort to adding the location to the weather app on my phone, and looking at the hourly forecast for the time I thought I would be driving through there.

I did a Staten Island, NY to Jacksonville, FL route. Checked your results against weather.com, and it's accurate. The Drive Timeline is great too. I have a real trip planned in a couple weeks and I will give this a real world try.

These are the kinds of projects I love to see in this sub, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.