Hey everyone 👋,
As a web developer, I wanted to work on a fun side project that also helps people. Growing up, I always loved the idea of waking up and wondering: “Will school be canceled today because of snow?” So, I decided to turn that nostalgia into a little web app: Snow Day Calculator 🚀.
🌨️ What It Does
The tool is super simple:
You enter your location ❄️
It checks weather data ☁️
Then it gives you a prediction on the chances of a snow day.
It’s completely free, lightweight, and works on both desktop and mobile.
⚙️ How I Built It
Frontend: Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (no heavy frameworks — I wanted it fast).
Hosting: Netlify — great for free deployments.
Performance: Optimized for Core Web Vitals (FCP/LCP ~1.7s 🚀).
Fun factor: Tried to keep it playful yet useful.
🛠️ Lessons Learned
Even small projects benefit a lot from performance optimization — lazy-loading images, reserving space for elements to reduce layout shift, and preloading fonts made a big difference.
Building something fun makes it way easier to actually finish the project.
Sharing projects like this is a great way to improve as a developer (and get feedback from the community!).
🔗 Try It Out
👉 You can try the app here: Snow Day Calculator
Would love feedback, feature requests, or even bug reports. Thinking about adding:
Different regions’ school calendars
More accurate weather models
A little fun animation for snow 🌨️
💬 Question for the community: What’s a small/fun project you’ve built recently just for the joy of it?
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