Ah, weather, it is the boon and bane of every traveler. It seems that nearly every place has an “ideal weather” to visit, and you try your best to plan to be there for it, but it always seems to go wrong when you are there.

I have to start this out by saying that I am not particularly good at dealing with setbacks in travel at all, and weather is no exception. The tips I am going to share with you come from my own experiences being frustrated by the weather while traveling.

The way to deal with bad weather comes in two broad varieties: Embrace and Adjust. I will use some examples from our own travels to help you understand these two strategies.

Preparation for Bad Weather

But before I talk about embracing and adjusting I want to say a quick word about preparation. Being prepared for bad weather can go a long way to helping you enjoy your travel experience no matter what happens. This means having the clothing and gear available that will help you deal with the adverse weather. If it could rain do you have rain coats or umbrellas? If it could snow do you coats, boots, and gloves? If it could get hot are you dressing in layers?

It also means knowing what the alternative options are if the weather causes problems. Are there things you can do indoors in climate controlled environments that would also be fun even if they aren’t your first choice? If you can’t reach your destination are there other places along the way or a little out of the way that you could go to?

Embracing the Bad Weather

If the weather is not what you were expecting or hoping for, but the activity you planned is still safe to do, you can choose to embrace the bad weather as an opportunity. In bad weather such as rain or snow you might get to see a unique side of the location you are visiting that few people get to see. This can be especially true if you are photographer, often the bad weather conditions can give you a unique shot that others will not have had.

The upside to bad weather that is not dangerous is that it almost always cuts down on crowds. Many people are unwilling to go out in bad weather, and especially local visitors will often postpone visiting until another day.

Adjusting Plans to the Weather

Sometimes you can’t embrace the bad weather. The weather may make it too dangerous to continue with the planned activity, or the bad weather may make it so unenjoyable that it is not worth doing for you or your family. In these scenarios it is best to be proactive about adjusting your plans to still find a way to enjoy the trip.

A good way to adjust your plans is to find an inside activity that you can do while the weather is bad. Many places have visitor centers and/or museums that you can visit and still have some of the experience you would have had outside.

If you can’t continue in the same vein as you planned there are still likely things you can do to have fun. Most tourist towns have a variety of indoor activities and entertainment. You can also visit restaurants to try local foods. In fact eating is often a good option to keep yourself from being both hungry and angry in bad weather.

Safety During Bad Weather

Safety should always be your concern when traveling. You can always travel again later so long as you stay safe now. Several times we have chosen to adjust the timing of a trip in order to stay safe because we were monitoring the weather along our route. For example when we were camping at Joshua Tree National Park last year we chose to adjust by leaving a day early, going back to St. George, UT and doing some things there. The first time we went to the Grand Canyon we cut about half a day off our trip in order to not get stuck in a bad thunderstorm.

When you have to cancel plans for safety reasons recognize that it is the right choice and try to have a good attitude throughout it.

Rain

Rain is one of the most common forms of disruptive weather. It seems that it rains when we go to many places. For example it was pretty rainy the first day that we were visiting Venice. This wasn’t great because it meant that we were wandering around an unknown city and we were wet, and unprepared. But we still got out and saw the city than evening. In some was it was nice because the Piazza San Marco was completely empty of people and pigeons during while it was raining. We also had to haggle with a street vendor for umbrellas, which was a lesson in being prepared.

One of the worst run-ins we have had with rain was our trip to Natural Bridges National Monument near Blanding UT. It was colder and wetter than we were expecting, and I was not happy. We made some adjustments and still ended up having a great time. We drove the scenic loop around the park so we could still get some great photos (these were actually better because of the over cast), we drove down to Hovenweep National Monument where it was not raining and had a great visit there, and we waited for the weather to clear a little and did the shortest of our planned hikes. It wasn’t the trip we had expected but it was still great.

Snow

Snow can be one of the most dangerous types of weather to deal with. Snow often gets us while we are on the road to or from someplace warm in the winter months. When we were coming back from Disneyland after Thanksgiving a couple years ago, Utah got hit with a terrible snow storm and traffic on I-15 came to a complete standstill. At that point we were thankfully able to get our car turned around and going back the other way to get to the closest town and Meagan was able to use her phone to make a hotel reservation there before every room in the town filled up completely.

One thing we learned from this experience is to always be prepared for the weather you will have to travel through, because the trip had been to California we did not have the proper clothing or gear to deal with being stuck in a snow storm, if we had not been able to make it to a hotel we would have been in some serious trouble.

Heat

Because so much of travel happens during the summers we are accustom to dealing with heat a lot of the time. Where it can become a problem is when it is unexpected. While visiting London we found ourselves in one of the biggest heatwaves the city had ever had. That wasn’t something we expected while in England, so we had to embrace it and still have a good time in London. We still went out and still did things, we had to buy more expensive European bottled water than we were anticipating, but it was still fun.

Similarly when we visiting Turkey a few years ago we were just unaware of the extreme heat that we would be dealing with in the summer there. It was extra warm when we went to Ephesus and we needed to spend some extra money to purchase sun milk (like sunscreen) from a street vendor. Our tour guide made some adjustments to the tour lessening our time in the old city, but that was to keep us safe from the heat, so we tried to just be happy that we had the amazing opportunity to visit that place.

Wind

Wind on its own will often not force you to abandon your travel plans, but it can make for a miserable time doing outdoor activities. Our worst encounters with wind have been in Arches National Park, which makes since because the Arches are partly formed by wind erosion.

On our most recent trip there we were able to hike to Delicate Arch early in the day, and though the wind was still very bad, it was not as strong as it was later in the day. After that we chose to go to the visitor center for a little bit to be inside and then we chose to do mostly viewpoints and short walkouts the rest of the day. We still had a fun time despite the windy weather.

Sum Up

Weather is part of travel. I have realized that if I am going to travel as much as I want to that I am going to encounter a lot of bad weather as I do so. That doesn’t mean that I am happy about it, but I have found that if you either embrace or adjust to it you can still enjoy your trip as long as you have a good attitude about it.