How do you determine if the weather is okay for a cross-country shipment?

is there a map on Weather Underground or Weather.com or another site that shows temperatures over the course of a week?

It’s easy. Stop in May, and start in October.

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March - May and October - November are my shipping seasons.

I usually consider the months of October and April to be safe. I had to have my cellar shipped a lifetime ago and went with October 10 as the westbound date. Still can get horrible winter storms with sub zero temps in the High Plains states, but it not the base case.

One issue is that is the chaos of todays shipping world, one doesn’t really have assurances on what path a parcel might take.

NOAA is where all the commercial weather companies get their info, and this map is quite helpful, though the color scale shifts according to season (yellow is now 90, it was 80 through the spring shipping season) You can also click on individual regions for more accuracy/detail.

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for SC, our window is more like ?Thanksgiving-end of March. we tend to be the limiting factor just as often as the three hour stop in TX would be on its way here.

Glen,

I asked the same question a while back here. There’s some good information in the old thread.

Cheers,
Warren

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I look at the 5-day forecast for Las Vegas which I figure is a good proxy for about the hottest point the truck is likely to go through.

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I agree about not shipping during the summer, unless you’re using special shipping and/or special insulated packaging…even then.

As for maps, the following link is to a map of the US giving the week’s average temp:

http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/temp1

Despite the week granularity, I’ve found this map to be quite useful. Over the years, this has been the most helpful/accurate in planning pick dates, esp for picking prior to a heatwave. I’ve always been a bit surprised by this…tho the average of the daily predicted highs & lows isn’t necessarily going to be the same as the predicted average of the entire period.

I also use this for planning cross country shipping, since it’s exactly the info I’m looking for. I still check several other weather/temp sites as well, for various purposes/reasons.

Also, cross country shipments generally get there via rail, at least with UPS (am guess the same with FedEx tho).

UPS has a shipping consolidation site in Phoenix…but if a railcar gets filled with packages, in the bay area for example, then that railcar will skip Phoenix and will start its journey getting attached to various engines to it’s destination. So, esp for major metropolitan destinations, avoiding Phoenix is fairly certain. Not that this will help much in the summer tho…it’s hot everywhere…esp this week!

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Eldorado Weather has max and min temperature maps with forecasts for 6 days out.

My rule is no shipping before Halloween. So all the wine accumulated until then is delivered in early November. In some years I will get things shipped again in March, but if there isn’t a lot I will just wait until the following Halloween.

But these days (a) I am not buying a ton and (b) I am way more likely to buy local, or from retailers in NY or CHI.

Cold chain is the bees knees. Basically as cheap as ground and bottles are sent priority overnight (so AM delivery) after being repacked with an ice pack at the regional depot. I live in Florida and as long as the bottles aren’t priceless/special, I’ll do this all year round.

I live in Alaska so my windows can get crazy. I generally check the forecast for each of the major hubs that my wine will pass through to see what the highs and lows are and make sure that the low stays above 25 and the high doesn’t get past 80. This is at least for wine shipments that I wouldn’t be too worried if the wine is spoiled. For anything of significant value I try to make sure that the entire shipping window is 40-70 (so basically October and maybe November if I’m lucky and parts of April). Spring tends to be easier for generic shipments because we’ll have 3-5 day windows where the lows are above 25 and the weather is much more reasonable down south.

Unfortunately i have yet to have a repacked box with ice packs through cold chain, and with fedex’s ongoing issues, no guarantee if AM delivery. In theory it sounds great, but id rather just wait…

I usually use this…

Map with high and low temp forecast for 10 days.

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I use this one:
https://digital.weather.gov/

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I consult the stars and read my oracle bones.

Just a PSA - I’ve had two places in the past two weeks decide to ship in the middle of a heat wave, by ground, without telling me and despite weather holds put on the orders. Always a good idea to double check. May to October are generally no ship months for me.