Torrential App —Welcome!

Welcome to Torrential! We’re here to help you get wet less, when you’re active outdoors. This post covers:

• How Torrential Works
• Understanding the Weather

As the app is updated, this post will be updated to match. If you have any questions, you can email us, or post in the comments.

How Torrential Works

Customising your settings

If you’d like to change your settings, you can change them from the location link at the top of each email/page. There are three settings you can change:

• Set your journey — monitor the weather for one, or two locations covering a journey (just leave the second blank if you don’t need it)
• Activity Type — what kind of activity you do (we’re not using this for anything special yet, but it’s key to future features)
• Alert time — when you receive your email alert, either 8pm the day before, or 6am on the morning of that day
• Alert Days — what days of the week you want to receive your alerts on e.g. if you commute on weekdays, or are only active on weekends
• Weather Units — What units you want for Temperature (and other measures when we introduce them), metric (ºC) or imperial (ºF)

Daily email alerts

We send you a tailored message, each evening, based on the location that you have set for your activities. The email summarises the hourly weather between 6am and 9pm for the following day.

Detailed weather

You can view a more detailed prediction online, covering (for each hour):

• Summary forecast (clear, partly cloudy, cloudy, rain, sleet, snow, hail, fog)
• Perceived temperature in ºC (how it actually feels)
• Rain severity (none, light, moderate, heavy)
• Rain likelihood in % (chance of rain)
• UV Strength (low, moderate, high, very high, extreme)

Add to your calendar

You can easily add a reminder to your calendar for the best time for you to travel. This feature works with links (Google/Yahoo/Outlook.com) or ICS files (iCal/Outlook/Thunderbird).

Understanding the Weather

To simplify the view in Torrential, we use icons and short numbers to communicate the weather. We hope the interface is self explanatory (if not, let us know!), but here’s the insights in detail.

Weather Summary

Summary icons give a brief overview of the conditions, but limited detail.

Apparent Temperature

Apparent temperature, shown in Degrees Centigrade (ºC), is the temperature equivalent perceived by humans, caused by the combined effects of Air temperature, Relative humidity and Wind speed.

As a rough guide, for being active in the heat:

• 20ºC to 29ºC: Little to no discomfort
• 30ºC to 39ºC: Some discomfort
• 40ºC to 45ºC: Great discomfort; avoid exertion
• Above 45ºC: Dangerous; heat stroke quite possible

Rain Severity

Rain severity is a measure of how much rain will fall in that time period (mm per hour).

• None — no precipitation
• Light rain (>0mm to 1mm) — precipitation rate is more than 0mm/hour and less than 1.0mm/hour
• Moderate rain — precipitation rate is between 1.0 mm/hour and 16.0 mm/hour
• Heavy rain — precipitation rate is above 16.0 mm/hour

Rain Likelihood

Rain Likelihood is the chance of it raining in that time period scored as a percentage from 0 to 100. For example at 25%, we are saying that out of 100 situations with similar weather, it should rain on 25 of those, and not rain on 75. This combines with Rain Severity as shown below.

UV Strength

Ultraviolet index is measure of the strength of the suns rays from Low to Extreme.

• Low (0 to 2.9) — low danger from the sun’s UV rays for the average person.
• Moderate (3.0–5.9)- moderate risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Stay in shade near midday when the sun is strongest.
• High (6.0–7.9)- high risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Protection against skin and eye damage is needed. Reduce time in the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
• Very high (8.0–10.9)- very high risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Take extra precautions because unprotected skin and eyes will be damaged and can burn quickly. Minimise sun exposure between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
• Extreme (11.0+) —extreme risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Take all precautions because unprotected skin and eyes can burn in minutes. Try to avoid sun exposure between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Just in case you need it, here’s the general advice for going out in the sun:

• Bright surfaces, such as sand, water and snow, will increase UV exposure.
• If you burn easily, always cover up and use broad spectrum SPF 30+ sunscreen.
• Reapply sunscreen every 2–3 hours or after swimming/sweating
• Relevant UV protection includes- shade, sun protective clothing, a wide-brimmed hat, UV-blocking sunglasses, broad spectrum SPF 30+ sunscreen

Update log

A general list of updates we’ve shipped:

Version 0.4 — TBC

- Check our live Trello Roadmap for updates

Version 0.3

- Added metric/imperial unit choice on settings for our friends over the pond

- You can now decide what days of the week you get alerts on

- Fixed the landing page to make it easier to sign up

- Implemented asynchronous calls via a queue, so we don’t get caught out by an external API failure *cough*mailgun*cough*

- Lots of refactoring and improvements around the system

Version 0.2

- Expanded from UK Only locations to worldwide

- Weather on a route — set two locations to track weather on a journe

- Feedback on unsubscribe — please never leave, but if you do, tell us why?

- Welcome email — when you sign up we send you a helpful email

- Fixed a load of timezone bugs and corner cases with Google Places API

Version 0.12

- We made the UV/Rain/weather symbols a little clearer, based on user feedback

- We tweaked the web and email layouts, based on user feedback

- There’s a new setting — “Alert time”, which changes when you get your email alert

- We generally made the system a little more rugged and fixed a few minor bugs and UX/UI issues

Version 0.1

- Integrated the DarkSky API for weather

- Integrated the Google Places API for locations

- Emails weather, for a set location, to user at 8pm the day before

Errors or Questions?

Comment or email us!