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How the weather will affect your commute

What’s your daily commute looking like these days?

If you’re like most people, your commute is in the 15-30 minute range.  Most people want to live near where they work in order to maximize their home time and not spend their day merely sitting in their car in traffic.

The 2-Second Commute: Join the Exploding Ranks of Freelance Virtual Assistants
The 2-Second Commute:
Join the Exploding Ranks of Freelance Virtual Assistants

Web Watch has had both long and short commutes.  Our shortest regular commute was about five miles; our longest commute required using public transportation and could take 90 minutes or longer as a matter of course.

And let’s not forget Halloween.  One year, we only had to go about 12 miles from work to home.  It took two hours.  As a co-worker said, it would have almost been faster to walk home that day than to try and drive.

And forget everything if it starts to rain.  Bad weather tends to muck up the works when it comes to increasing your commute time — but the real question is HOW BADLY DOES THE WEATHER ALTER YOUR COMMUTING TIME?

That’s the question London researchers put to the test when they calculated a normal commute time and compared it to the same commute when done in light rain, moderate rain, heavy rain, light snow, and heavy snow.

While they already knew that weather would negatively affect the commute times, they found that light rain only extended the commute time from 0.1 – 2.1% more than usual.

Heavy snow, on the other hand, led to an increase of 7.4 – 11.4% of time.

They did also declare that a more congested road combined with bad weather could exponentially increase these figures.

So thanks, Scientists, for telling us something that we already know:  driving to work in the rain can really stink, time-wise.