About Snow Day Eh

For fun, not official. Always check your board's official announcement.

What it is

Snow Day Eh is a free hobby project from Mississauga, Ontario. It turns the weather forecast into a rough percentage for “will school buses be cancelled on the next school morning?” in parts of the Greater Toronto Area, and it can notify you when an official notice appears. It is not operated by, endorsed by, or connected to any school board, school bus consortium, or government body. We don't use their logos.

How the odds work

For each bus weather zone we look at the overnight forecast (snowfall and when it falls, freezing rain, wind gusts, wind chill, temperatures near 0 °C) and any active Environment Canada warnings. Each factor adds to a score, and the score is turned into a percentage. Rural zones with long routes start from a higher baseline because they cancel more readily. The weights are hand-set starting points, not a proven model. Every morning we record what the odds were next to what really happened (see “Our track record” on the home page) so the model can be improved.

Buses are often cancelled while schools stay open. The percentage is about buses. Once a notice is posted, we show it instead of the odds.

Where the information comes from

• Weather forecast: Open-Meteo.com serving Environment and Climate Change Canada GEM/HRDPS model data (CC BY 4.0).
• Weather warnings: Environment and Climate Change Canada (MSC GeoMet alerts). Data Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada, under the ECCC data licence.
• Announcements (Toronto, Halton, York, Durham): public news feeds and notice pages published by the transportation consortia and boards. We check them every few minutes between 5 and 8 a.m. on school days, with a descriptive User-Agent, conditional requests, and no attempt to bypass any blocks.
• Peel: the Peel consortium website doesn't allow automated access, so we don't read it. Peel notices appear only when the site operator confirms them by hand, and may be late or missing. Use the official link.

Our automatic reading of notices is best-effort text matching. It can miss a notice or misread one. The official source always wins.

Privacy

• No accounts, no ad networks, no analytics cookies, no third-party trackers, and no location access.
• Your chosen board and zone are saved only in your own browser (local storage).
• If you turn on alerts, we store an anonymous push-notification address issued by your browser, the zones you chose, and your alert settings. We don't know your name or email. Turn alerts off in the app (or in your browser settings) and the address is deleted.
• We count visits with one anonymous ping per browsing session (a daily total, with no IP address, device ID or cookie stored).
• Optional parent email heads-up (only shown when switched on): if a parent or guardian signs up, we store the email address, the boards chosen, and when and how consent was given. We send a confirmation email first (double opt-in), identify the sender and mailing address in every message, and include a one-click unsubscribe. You can unsubscribe at any time and we stop sending immediately. We never sell or share the list.
• Sponsor slots (when switched on) are plain links to local businesses. We count anonymous daily views and clicks per board, with no cookies, IP addresses or per-person tracking, and sponsors never receive any visitor data.
• Kid-friendly by design: nothing here asks for personal information. If you're under 13, ask a parent or guardian before turning on notifications.

Limits

Forecasts are uncertain and bus decisions depend on local judgment (road crews, plow timing, and more). Don't rely on this site for safety or travel decisions. Snow Day Eh is provided “as is”, without warranties.

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