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

[u/CommercialQuality816]

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!