Stay Safe With a Free Weather App

When Mother Nature is in a bad mood, information technology helps to keep an eye on what's going on in the sky, and one of the most important tools for that is a mobile atmospheric condition app. A good weather condition app tin be used for elementary controlling, such every bit determining whether you'll demand to bring an umbrella to work, or for more than serious preparation and warnings. With unsafe weather conditions across the land, and especially hurricanes threatening coastal states, information technology'south a good idea to check the forecast or radar for upcoming conditions. A mobile app lets you lot do that wherever you are, whenever you like.

A Hard Pelting's A-Gonna Autumn

When testing weather apps, we spent about of our fourth dimension evaluating the effectiveness of their pattern. An ideal weather app is visually pleasing and easy to use. If you have to dig through several screens to find out when information technology's going to rain, the app is off to a bad start. To our surprise, performance turns out to be a differentiator in the weather app category, especially on Android, equally a few of the apps were sluggish to the signal of being nigh unusable in our testing.

What we didn't look for is whether or not the predicted weather came to pass. Our reasons are twofold: Start, well-nigh weather apps get the majority of their data from the National Weather condition Service. Some too pull the predictions from services like Atmospheric condition Underground or AccuWeather. Some companies, like The Weather Channel, have their own predictive models, but many apps are but shells into which data flows.

2nd, and more importantly, to really make up one's mind the accuracy of the service's model, we'd take to perform exhaustive tests across the globe. We're but not prepare up to tackle that kind of claiming. Equally it stands, we'll presume that if a visitor has invested the time and effort to create its own predictive models for something as complex equally weather, then it probably knows more than near meteorology than we do. For what it'south worth, the apps were all quite accurate during testing.

Y'all Don't Need a Atmospheric condition Man

If you're actually concerned about accuracy, consider getting a weather station of your own. The Ambient Atmospheric condition WS-1001-WIFI Observer and the BloomSky Solar Powered Weather Station are surprisingly compelling tools to get you hyperlocal weather condition data. Some stations, like the Observer, hook into Weather Hush-hush's service, giving you a custom forecast and improving the service's information. In general, though, weather condition stations are more than about recording your local information than about getting forecasts. Setting up and maintaining a weather station is a fun scientific discipline project—just maybe not right earlier a hurricane hits.

I Don't See My Favorite App!

At first, we did not fully appreciate the sheer number of atmospheric condition apps available for Android and iOS devices. In the end, nosotros picked those nosotros idea offered something unique, along with the virtually popular apps. If your favorite app didn't brand the cutting, permit us know in the comments below.

Weather Underground

Gratuitous
Bachelor on: Android, iOS

Weather Hugger-mugger is a darling among weather geeks, using its network of personal weather stations to supplement the weather information the other guys draw from. That customs aspect even makes its way into the app, letting users submit their ain weather observations with simply a few taps. A pattern refresh has fabricated this already-capable app sleek and tasteful, landing it in the tiptop spot for conditions apps.

Yahoo Weather condition

Gratis
Available on: Android, iOS

A very close runner-up, Yahoo Atmospheric condition is a beautifully designed app that brings in the all-time features of other atmospheric condition apps—and even improves on them. Crowdsourced images from Flickr are featured prominently and actually bring this app to life. What'south missing? More radar map options, and a tool for crowdsourcing weather observations. If yous don't like Weather Underground, give this i a spin.

The Weather Channel

Free
Available on: Android, iOS, Windows 10 Mobile

Nosotros got off to a bad commencement with the Weather Channel app, but an update changed everything. The new version of the Conditions Aqueduct app is a slick and capable companion.

1Weather
Free
Available on: Android, iOS

1Weather hangs its chapeau on its design and a slew of slick widgets to evangelize your weather information. To us, however, the app feels a bit dried, and its pattern is more glitz than substance. That said, this app has one of the best hourly and weekly forecast pages of any app nosotros've tested. Other developers should steal these ideas.

AccuWeather

Free
Available on: Android, iOS, Windows ten Mobile

AccuWeather used to exist kind of dowdy, until a design refresh radically improved its overall wait. However, it all the same lags when switching between sections inside the app, some of which are withal chaotic with unnecessary information and links. Nosotros do like that it includes a video section for watching all of the latest news and updates on upcoming weather events.

WeatherBug

Free
Available on: Android, iOS

WeatherBug bugged usa and then much with its tiresome performance that we couldn't wait to uninstall information technology. Add to that a scant collection of lackluster widgets and poor design, and you've got a real trifecta of unpleasantness. Not even WeatherBug'due south unique lightning-detection feature can outweigh the app's flaws.