English
Everything on this page is measured, not estimated by us. Each card reads the same feed as the full tool behind it, so if a number here looks wrong, the source says the same thing. Cards go quiet rather than guess when a feed stops answering.
Measured in the last half hour
Where each number comes from
No card on this page is our opinion. Each one is the output of a tool that reads an official feed on a schedule, and each links to the full tool, where the same number sits with the context that makes it mean something.
Air quality and smoke from Environment and Climate Change Canada station observations. Road closures from DriveBC Open511. Border waits southbound from US Customs and Border Protection, northbound from the Canada Border Services Agency. Airport conditions from the aviation weather service and NAV CANADA notices. Tides from the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Space weather from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. Fire bans and active fires from the BC Wildfire Service. Sailings from BC Ferries current conditions. Weather from a European and Canadian model blend.
What a quiet card means
Feeds go down. When one does, the card for it disappears from this page instead of showing yesterday's figure dressed as today's. That is the whole policy, and it is why the number of cards changes. The individual tools go further and say out loud when they are showing something stored.
If you are leaving within the hour
Five trips out of Vancouver, and the one card that decides each of them. Check that card, then go.
How fast each number moves
Refreshing this page every five minutes is wasted effort on most of these. Some of them barely move inside a day, and one of them is known years ahead.
| Number | Changes | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Border waits | Every 10 to 15 minutes | Lane staffing and the queue itself |
| Road closures | Every few minutes | Crashes, rockfall, scheduled roadwork |
| Airport conditions | Hourly, more often in bad weather | Ceiling, visibility, wind direction |
| Ferry space | Every few minutes on sailing days | Bookings and walk-up traffic filling the deck |
| Air quality | Hourly | Wind direction over the fires, and inversion |
| Wildfires and bans | Daily, faster during an interface fire | New starts, containment, rain |
| Space weather | Every minute for Kp, hourly for the model | Solar wind arriving at the L1 satellite |
| Tides | Known years ahead | The moon; weather shifts the real water by centimetres |
Reading these together
The cards interact more than they look. Smoke and a fire ban usually arrive in the same week, and both point at whether a camping trip is worth the drive. A closed highway and a full ferry are the same problem seen twice, and the answer to both is usually leaving earlier. A clear sky raises the odds on the aurora card and lowers the airport card at the same time. When two cards are red in the same direction, believe them.
Planning further out than today is a different job. Start with the best time to visit, then the itineraries for how the days fit together, and the safety page for the parts of this coast that catch visitors out.
