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My Favorite Weather Apps and Features

Boating | Orcas Island | Pacific Northwest | Technology and Gadgets | weather

September 28, 2022

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By: Lee LeFever

I write books and run a company called Common Craft. I recently moved from Seattle to a rural island. Here, I write about online business, book publishing, modern home construction, and occasionally, dumb jokes.

I treat weather watching as a hobby. Living in the PNW means that there is almost always interesting weather to experience. I use a number of weather apps and below, I’ve offered a number of my favorites.

A screenshot of the Predict Wind App

Weather Underground (Wunderground.com) – I use this app the most, in part, because I like the interface and graph of precipitation (as seen above). Wunderground uses a proprietary forecasting system that’s based on over 250k personal weather stations.

Weather Channel App (weather.com) – This forecast is similar to Wunderground and is based on some of the same data, along with IBM’s proprietary forecasts. What I love about this app is the future radar that shows predicted precipitation moving on a map, hours into the future.

National Weather Service (weather.gov) – The US government’s weather agency. NWS data is part of most US forecasts and is known for reliability. The interfaces are predictably bad, but the data is good.

AccuWeather (accuweather.com) AccuWeather is known for accuracy and I like the app. My favorite feature is forecast for over a month into the future.

Carrot Weather (meetcarrot.com) This app is all about personality and fun. You can choose from a list of forecasts (like AccuWeather above) and it will present them in a nice interface and with hilarious/irreverent messages.

Predict Wind (predictwind.com) An essential app for boaters and coastal residents. Similar to Windy, this app shows the direction and intensity of wind animated on a map over time. Very cool design and technology.

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