Head to head // declassified
BusCancellations.ca vs SnowPredictor.ca
Updated · By The BusCancellations.ca team
Both are free Canadian snow day predictors that start from Environment Canada data. They differ in what they read, what they predict and what else is on the page. Here is the honest comparison, including where SnowPredictor.ca is ahead.
Short answer
Pick BusCancellations.ca if you’re in one of the regions we read and you care about bus cancellations (not only closures), want the live official status beside the prediction, or want to see the model’s numbers. Pick SnowPredictor.ca for more places, postal code search and a published accuracy record.
Feature by feature
| BusCancellations.ca | SnowPredictor.ca | |
|---|---|---|
| Live official bus status | Yes: 26 regions read from their official transportation sites, every 3 minutes from 4 to 11 a.m. on school days, with the time of our last check | No; it tells you to check your board’s website or local radio |
| Weather data | The Environment Canada city forecast, hourly forecast and warnings, read from api.weather.gc.ca; predictions refreshed every 15 minutes | Environment Canada’s GDPS model (about 10 km) via the Open-Meteo API, with NOAA’s GFS as a check; refreshed hourly |
| What it predicts | The chance that buses are cancelled or schools close on the next school morning | Full school closures; transportation-only cancellations are not what it was trained on |
| Environment Canada warnings | Yes: snowfall, winter storm, freezing rain, snow squall, blizzard and extreme cold warnings each add a chance | Not mentioned in its method pages |
| Factors | Overnight snow, freezing rain, blowing snow, extreme cold, warnings | Snowfall, wind chill, wind speed, snow depth, storm timing, plus bonus points for freezing rain and blizzards |
| How the number is made | Published: five factors combined as independent risks, with the numbers for each of 12 kinds of place on our about page | A points score, then a logistic regression on five years of board closure records; weights not published |
| Where | 63 places in 10 provinces, picked from a list (no postal code search) | 76 city pages across all provinces and territories, plus city or postal code search |
| Accuracy record | None yet. We log every prediction and every official decision since October 2026 and will re-fit the model from that history | Publishes 68–90% by type of storm, from its own back-test |
| Route alerts | No route alerts and no accounts | None mentioned |
| Cost | Free, no account; paid for by ads | Free, no account |
SnowPredictor.ca facts are from its home, How it works and Methodology pages, checked 2026-10-29.
The biggest difference: buses vs closures
In most of Ontario, a bad-weather morning cancels the buses and schools stay open for students who can get there. A full closure is rarer. SnowPredictor.ca’s How it works page says its algorithm is trained on full school closures, not transportation-only decisions, so on a freezing-rain morning that stops the buses but not the schools, its number answers a different question. Ours is the chance of either: buses cancelled or schools closed.
What each one reads
SnowPredictor.ca reads model output (Environment Canada’s GDPS, through Open-Meteo) and scores it with weights it doesn’t publish, calibrated on five years of board records. We read Environment Canada’s public city forecast, its hourly forecast and the warnings in effect, and score them with numbers we publish on the about page. Theirs has history behind it; ours is open to checking but has no track record yet.
On the morning itself
A prediction stops being useful around 6 a.m., when the official call comes out. SnowPredictor.ca sends you to your board for that. On our region pages it’s already there: the status from the official transportation site, the delayed and cancelled routes, and the time we last read it, for 26 regions.
Who should pick SnowPredictor.ca
- Families outside the places and regions we cover, including the territories.
- Anyone who wants to search by postal code.
- Anyone who wants a predictor with published accuracy figures today.
- Families in boards that close schools outright, where a closure-trained model fits.
Open the snow day predictor
See tomorrow’s chance for your area, the reasons behind it and the live bus status.
Open the snow day predictor →Keep reading
Sources
- SnowPredictor.ca home page, checked 2026-10-29
- SnowPredictor.ca, How it works, checked 2026-10-29
- SnowPredictor.ca, Methodology, checked 2026-10-29
- SnowPredictor.ca, About, checked 2026-10-29
- BusCancellations.ca, About and how it works
Not affiliated with any rival, school board or transportation consortium. Spotted something out of date? Tell us at hello@buscancellations.ca.