About & how it works

Every school bus region in Canada posts its morning decision on its own website, so families with kids in two boards (or who cross a region line for work) end up checking several. BusCancellations.ca is HQ: one screen with all of them.

Live bus status

We read each region’s official transportation site every three minutes from 4 to 11 a.m. on school days and every 20 minutes otherwise, and show what it says, with the time we last checked. We don’t edit, guess or fill in: if a site doesn’t answer, we say so and show the last status we saw. We are not affiliated with any board or consortium, and the official site is always the final word.

The snow day predictor

For each place we read the newest Environment Canada city forecast every 15 minutes and look at the night before and the morning bus run. Five things count, each as its own chance:

• Overnight snow: the forecast amount, compared with how much snow that kind of place usually takes to stop buses.
• Freezing rain or ice pellets during the morning run, the most common reason for cancellations in eastern Canada.
• Blowing snow and strong gusts, which close rural roads with little new snow.
• Extreme cold, in regions where wind chill alone cancels buses.
• Environment Canada warnings in effect: snowfall, winter storm, freezing rain, snow squall, blizzard, extreme cold.

They combine as independent risks into one number. Our starting calibration by kind of place:

These are our model’s numbers, not any board’s policy. We record every prediction and every official decision and re-fit them as each winter’s history builds up.

Contact

Spotted a mistake, or want your region added? Email hello@buscancellations.ca. Privacy.

Forecast data: Environment and Climate Change Canada (Open Government Licence – Canada).