Show HN: The best time to visit any city

395 points

9 years ago

I wanted to build a tool to help people decide when and where to travel. As I started building, I realized that "when" and "where" need separate treatment to be most useful. The map tool handles "where" best:

https://championtraveler.com/travel-weather-map/

Clicking through each week would be frustrating for those who know where they want to travel but not when. For these people I built "best time to travel" pages using the same data.

https://championtraveler.com/best-time-to-travel/

My hope is this site will help travelers plan.

This data is taken from the National and Atmospheric Administration's global summaries of the day (NOOA's GSoD). I used an SQL database to crunch the numbers into monthly and weekly averages by station. For the "best time" pages I used and calculated several more variables. I then imported the data into Tableau and added the filters you see on the map. I also used data from the State Department regarding travel advisories.

Would love your thoughts!

The whole buildout was a solo project, but I owe Ryan Whitacker a big "thank you" for his guidance. He built a similar tool on his site (https://decisiondata.org/the-best-time-to-visit-anywhere/) in April, and was generous to offer me guidance for expanding upon his idea.

Known issues:

* I am aware that the map is bad on mobile, so my next step is to improve the mobile experience.

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