Newer Weather Apps

[dmoskaluk]

It might be time to have another look around the App store through the plethora of Weather Forecast Apps available. Particularly at Apps with US sourced data, as over the last year or two there have been many mergers and amalgamations which have basically limited the choice of weather data to only a few, as opposed to the multitude which used to prevail. 'WSI' ( Commercial) & it's more public division 'Intellicast' have been swallowed by Wunderground ( Weather Underground) which in itself has joined IBM's 'Weather Company'. Many of the Apps now are really simply varied displays with the same source of data using differing amounts of glitz & gimmickery in their graphics. Accuweather & Dark Sky as sources probably dominate the remainder, and all have strengths & weaknesses. Where one is situated seems the biggest factor with the accuracy of short term ( a week tops) local forecasting and real time actual reporting. Crowdsourced data is of course much more relevant in larger metropolitan areas. The needs of users is also very diverse ie from 'What to put on today?'
to 'Do we go ahead with an event tomorrow' to ' Do we plan our Wedding, or Cruise vacation, or Group Hike at a certain time of year.?
'Windy ( windy.com)' is a 'beyond perfect' app, but is not what Mom will look as when dressing the kids for school. And so on.....
Having retired from life in the skies as a pilot, gimmicky displays don't really impress me and my 'go to' apps and information sources might be considered dry or dull. NOAA/NWS/NHC have excellent web presence for land air and sea, but it's not 'entertaining' as such. 'Windy' takes a bit of fiddling and understanding / customizing to get it to tell you what you need to know as well.
For those who post feedback, it would be nice to see where you are located in the world and how the traditional weather providers & products meet your needs when and particularly if it's away from their bigger markets. Thanks and remember the saying of any farmer about rain - "Comes in TWO amounts - TOO much, or TOO little ️

 

[Annie_M]

It might be time to have another look around the App store through the plethora of Weather Forecast Apps available. Particularly at Apps with US sourced data, as over the last year or two there have been many mergers and amalgamations which have basically limited the choice of weather data to only a few, as opposed to the multitude which used to prevail. 'WSI' ( Commercial) & it's more public division 'Intellicast' have been swallowed by Wunderground ( Weather Underground) which in itself has joined IBM's 'Weather Company'. Many of the Apps now are really simply varied displays with the same source of data using differing amounts of glitz & gimmickery in their graphics. Accuweather & Dark Sky as sources probably dominate the remainder, and all have strengths & weaknesses. Where one is situated seems the biggest factor with the accuracy of short term ( a week tops) local forecasting and real time actual reporting. Crowdsourced data is of course much more relevant in larger metropolitan areas. The needs of users is also very diverse ie from 'What to put on today?'
to 'Do we go ahead with an event tomorrow' to ' Do we plan our Wedding, or Cruise vacation, or Group Hike at a certain time of year.?
'Windy ( windy.com)' is a 'beyond perfect' app, but is not what Mom will look as when dressing the kids for school. And so on.....
Having retired from life in the skies as a pilot, gimmicky displays don't really impress me and my 'go to' apps and information sources might be considered dry or dull. NOAA/NWS/NHC have excellent web presence for land air and sea, but it's not 'entertaining' as such. 'Windy' takes a bit of fiddling and understanding / customizing to get it to tell you what you need to know as well.
For those who post feedback, it would be nice to see where you are located in the world and how the traditional weather providers & products meet your needs when and particularly if it's away from their bigger markets. Thanks and remember the saying of any farmer about rain - "Comes in TWO amounts - TOO much, or TOO little ️

I seem to collect Weather Apps! I currently have 11 installed on my phone. There is no rhyme or reason for this... I just "like" them. Out of the 11, my top 4 favorites are:

WHIO Weather (a local TV Station that has darned good forecasters)
Dark Sky
The Weather Channel / Storm Radar


The most technical is Deep Weather, which is put out by the local office of the National Weather Service, which is based out of Wilmington, OH. It's pure science and goes into great detail.

Others in my collection are:

WTForecast, which offers decent forecast with profane humor. It makes me laugh, and that's a good thing!

BeWeather 3, Weather Hippie, Weather Live, Yahoo Weather are "pretty" but offer good information;

NOAA Radar Pro is disappointing, and always a few degrees off from other App's temperature.

And the stock weather app, which is ok...

 

[dmoskaluk]

I have 19 in my folder ( Apps + Bookmarked Safari links) Probably just a carryover days when I flew for the airline - and trust me, this type of information availability and graphics hadn't been thought of yet, & I retired only 10 years ago.
As an obvious keener, do check out Windy.... Take some time to fiddle with it, establish a free account, then you can save your customizations. I was introduced to it by a ferryboat Capt on the West Coast who in his wild youth used to race sailboats from SF to HNL... It's professional quality all round and has no ads other than occasional requests for donations to keep it free as such. I do contribute but I pick how much & when. It & NHC links serve me well during Hurricane Season, June through Nov. Try it, post your thoughts, then let's discuss ECMWF vs GFS modelling ( of weather )
I'm going to cherry-pick through my wxx folder and delete those I don't use, and try your suggestions as well - Thanks ️

 

[Annie_M]

I will check Windy out for sure!!!

 

[dmoskaluk]

It's available from iPhone & iPad as well as the Windy.com for iMac Safari link. Other than weather, no end of displays can be selected and saved. A favourite of mine is 'dust mass' which graphically tracks the awful Sahara Dust which comes across the ocean making landfall, you guessed it - The Eastern Caribbean. When I see it coming I know to check the Claritin supply

 

[Annie_M]

That's awesome!!! We were on a Caribbean cruise in November! We went to Princess Cay, St. Thomas and St. Martin.

 

[dmoskaluk]

Still way North of us - next time turn the corner around Antigua and come south along the island chain. Barbados is 'stuck out' to the east off the volcanic chain of Islands abeam St Vincent & Grenada. We are not quite as far south as Trinidad & Tobago. My wife is from further south, from Guyana, South America. The equator is generally our friend climate wise, but it has its moments

 

[dmoskaluk]

Have a look at 'Forecast Bar' for iOS aa well as 'Living Earth' for iOS with a link to the Mac App Store as well... I've used Forecast Bar for my 'out of folder' home screen on iPhone go to, and I use Living Earth ( yes, I bought all ) mainly for its fabulous screen saver option on the iMac....

 

[Just_Me_D]

Nowadays I only use two - The Weather Channel app (paid version) and BeWeather 3. The Weather Channel app has improved significantly over the years, in my opinion.

 

[dmoskaluk]

Nowadays I only use two - The Weather Channel app (paid version) and BeWeather 3. The Weather Channel app has improved significantly over the years, in my opinion.

Forecast Bar is a one click switch in Settings between Weather Company & Dark Sky as source this easy to compare on a day by day basis & to date, here on the Caribbean, Dark Sky has an edge for accuracy. Since I reinstalled ( & resubscribed) to BeWeather3, now Dark Sky fed, it has been glitchy very often needing to go to settings and click 'done' ( nothing actually 'done' though,) for it to show & use my current location. It's one of the few I've set up as 'location on' ALWAYS.....& Background App Refresh - ON but that doesn't help.....I like the display though. My Weather Channel app is now better that it was a few months ago ( used to be slow to launch) and is 'mostly close' in accuracy here..

 

[metllicamilitia]

I use BeWeather and Carrot Weather. Both have multiple sources you can choose from. On Android I use WTForecast.

EDIT: I’m the US Midwest, and Dark Sky is pretty accurate. I think it was more accurate a few years ago though.

 

[dmoskaluk]

'Hello Weather' though at first appearing very tacky graphically is ( after more than a years use) a very competent and informative app. With membership one can change the Home Screen icon which is a tenfold improvement. One can then also change between weather sources in one click, available are Dark Sky ( default and only one available without membership). Accuweather, Aeris Weather, The Weather Company. Also available used to be Wunderground, but because it was merged into the Weather Company, it's gone. It's as simplistic as apps come but was my Home Screen weather source before I found Forecast Bar, and it remains my wife's for a quick check in the morning. If it didn't look so silly it would probably be the one to beat but the content is very useful without needing any deeper study.

 

[Lee_Bo]

I've tried them all. I bit the bullet and paid the subscription (no "I'm not paying a fee" comments please) for Carrot and it's the only weather app I'm using. Works great on iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac Mini / MacBook Pro. And it's the only one I've found that reliably updates location on Apple Watch without you having to manually open the app.

 

[Ledsteplin]

Like Annie, my favorite no nonsense weather app is from the local TV station based in Huntsville, Alabama. The WAFF weather app has great features, offers all the data I need, with minimum glitter.
I also like MyRadar, and Emergency by the Red Cross.
Just for fun, I like BeWeather 3, Today Weather, and WeathershotPro.
For some cool graphics, MeteoEarth is interesting.

 

[dmoskaluk]

For those wishing for more than 'fact' in a Weather App. Not free, but a really classy presentation on iPhone, iPad, iMac ( with a super screensaver) Actual & Forecast reasonably accurate too here in the Caribbean

https://www.livingearthapp.com/

 

[dmoskaluk]

Something for the Canadians out in Apple  land who wish to use 'Dark Sky' as a weather resource and find it ( as an app) unavailable in the App Store....Simply use the Dark Sky website ( darksky.net) and make a home screen icon-'add to home screen' in Safari once having navigated to the page. You can now place it wherever you wish, in a folder or on your home screen and on opening, it will locate you and display excellent and USEABLE weather data. No, it's not spectacular to look at but in layman's language does tell you what you probably wish to know. It's worth exploring as there is a lot more on the page than what immediately meets the eye. Scroll down and use graphic sublinks to get details for several days going forward and lots more.
Since the amalgamation of Wunderground, Intellicast/WSI and 'The Weather Company', those away from the mainland USA, like here in the Caribbean, have found that up to date and frequently amended & correct reporting & analysis has often taken a back-seat to spectacular and pretty apps, all 'same source'. Accuweather, one of 'the competition' seems to do a nice job for the American mainland as well but can be iffy too when looking away from familiar population centers. Likewise outside N. American information from the Canadian Weather Network /MetéoMedia App. Crowdsourced Dark Sky data may be 'source' for other apps ( Carrot Weather & BeWeather 3 among them) but the Dark Sky App is n/a in many countries. My workaround seems quite functional, and although I did query Dark Sky about possible availability in Canada in the future, they have yet to reply.
My personal priorities in a weather app are A/. A good matrix of locations from which it gathers data, and B/ frequent updating when things are changing. So far, Dark Sky ( via the web browser) has done that for me - It's also a bookmark in the weather section of Safari bookmarks on the iMac. The Dark Sky people did advise ( a few years ago though,) that placing ads on the then revamped web page was not likely at least at that time.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Something for the Canadians out in Apple  land who wish to use 'Dark Sky' as a weather resource and find it ( as an app) unavailable in the App Store....Simply use the Dark Sky website ( darksky.net) and make a home screen icon-'add to home screen' in Safari once having navigated to the page. You can now place it wherever you wish, in a folder or on your home screen and on opening, it will locate you and display excellent and USEABLE weather data. No, it's not spectacular to look at but in layman's language does tell you what you probably wish to know. It's worth exploring as there is a lot more on the page than what immediately meets the eye. Scroll down and use graphic sublinks to get details for several days going forward and lots more.
Since the amalgamation of Wunderground, Intellicast/WSI and 'The Weather Company', those away from the mainland USA, like here in the Caribbean, have found that up to date and frequently amended & correct reporting & analysis has often taken a back-seat to spectacular and pretty apps, all 'same source'. Accuweather, one of 'the competition' seems to do a nice job for the American mainland as well but can be iffy too when looking away from familiar population centers. Likewise outside N. American information from the Canadian Weather Network /MetéoMedia App. Crowdsourced Dark Sky data may be 'source' for other apps ( Carrot Weather & BeWeather 3 among them) but the Dark Sky App is n/a in many countries. My workaround seems quite functional, and although I did query Dark Sky about possible availability in Canada in the future, they have yet to reply.
My personal priorities in a weather app are A/. A good matrix of locations from which it gathers data, and B/ frequent updating when things are changing. So far, Dark Sky ( via the web browser) has done that for me - It's also a bookmark in the weather section of Safari bookmarks on the iMac. The Dark Sky people did advise ( a few years ago though,) that placing ads on the then revamped web page was not likely at least at that time.

I’m now using the Weather Channel app (paid) and Dark Sky. Dark Sky is definitely accurate for my location and the Weather Channel app remains more than sufficient as a standalone weather app for me.

 

[dmoskaluk]

Fully realizing that area by area comparisons are the only way to assess a 'Weather App' it's in this regard that I've found over the last several months, Dark Sky had very much the edge over Weather Company. I used to count on Wunderground, but of course now all it shows is Weather Company data in a different format. For mapping & radar, Intellicast / WSI were tops but have been 'blended away' too. I used to use 'Hello Weather' which despite the very clunky & tacky display, allowed comparisons between several sources which is where I could 'face off' Dark Sky vs Accuweather vs Weather Company for my own very local area - Dark Sky even located my street which is most often, though very old, unmapped...

 

[pr1nce]

I’m using Dark Sky and the native weather app. Dark Sky has been very accurate in my area.

 

[dmoskaluk]

Mostly for those who are either 'Weather Buffs' or who live or vacation , at this time of the year, in the tropics...

I tripped over a very worthwhile (free or $2.79 for additional features & ad-free) Hurricane & Severe Weather tracking app. It is one of the best I've seen to date and as a retired airline pilot who now resides full-time in the Caribbean, one could say that hurricane awareness is a strong factor in my life at this time of year....Its presentations are all from highly respected sources and it's scope of information is both historic as well as real time.

My Hurricane Tracker Pro by JRustonApps B.V. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/my-hurricane-tracker-pro/id1020486527

It sources raw NOAA/NHC/NWS constantly updated information as well as a host of other multi-source charts & graphics

It as well as Windy.com are my prime 'go-to' sources for my morning (or more often as needed) weather scans and self-briefings, and are far more comprehensive than anything which was available outside my airlines flight planning & dispatch office when I retired 10 years ago