Ever tried asking a cow about the weather? Because they’re not really the most informative beasts (about the weather, anyway).
“Cow, it looks like it might rain sometime today — any idea when?” Cud-chewing.
“How strong d’you think the wind will be later?” More cud-chewing, accompanied by blank staring.
“Look, cow, can you at least tell me if there are any severe weather advisories I should be aware of?” Cud-chewing stops, then resumes a few seconds later; blank stare may or may not actually be a look of terror.
Using the iPhone’s native Weather app is like asking a cow about the weather: it’s cute and harmless, but not very informative. Unless you’re exceptionally partial to cows and/or don’t mind walking off into the occasional surprise thunderstorm, it should be banished to the back page and replaced with The Weather Channel’s app.
Now you’ll have a flood of info at your fingertips to help plan your next adventure: hourly forecasts that include chance of precipitation, UV indices, visibility, times for sunrise/set, wind speed and direction and notification of any severe weather alerts in the area. Emailing what you’ve learned to a compadre is easy due to a “share” button on each weather info page.
TWC crammed the app full of gradated map overlays, so you can check out how far to drive to get cooler or see blue sky, or where it’s stopped snowing.
Americans can have access to a myriad of local traffic cams from key highway intersections, so they can check out road conditions prior to the morning/evening commute.
Other cool features include an option to view videos guiding you through local weather and info on pollen activity.
About the only drawback is that, like many other freebie apps, the free version of TWC is ad-supported; small price to pay for real advance warning of Thor’s tantrums though.
Alternatives:
AccuWeather.com: Great interface, a very interesting weather-index feature and almost all the stuff of the TWC app; but no map overlay options, no traffic cams, no ability to share info and a gimped severe-weather alert feature relegates it to (a close) second.
Pocket Weather: Fun, graphical interface, interesting temperature graphs showing recent and historical temps, map of earthquake activity, cool satellite images, METAR info for pilots; interface is a little over-busy, no hourly forecast, maps but no overlay options, no traffic cams, no severe weather alerts, sometimes slow to load, no sharing info.
World Weather Forecast: Moon phases, historical hourly temps, webcam image of location; ugly and confusing interface, no traffic cams, no sever weather alerts, no mapping options, no sharing info.
