With all this hot weather – and the possibility of a spanish plume and big thunderstorms forecast for the next few days – I thought I’d put together a review of what I think are the best weather apps for iPhone. Being a storm lover, and loving interesting weather of any kind there are a few weather apps I’ve found myself relying on a lot ever since I got my first iPhone, including BBC weather and Weather pro. I particularly use the radar feature so will be looking for which is the best weather radar app too.
So what are the best storm tracking apps? And what are the best weather apps for iPhone or iPad? Note – I’m not reviewing Android weather apps because I don’t have an Android device and believe they vary a fair bit from the iOS version.
1. Weather Pro App – FREE & £1.99 Pro Version
My favourite, and certainly the weather app I use the most, has to be the Weather Pro app. This is my go to iPhone app for general weather. The free version is really good but I’d definitely recommend upgrading to the paid version to get detailed radar, 2 week forecasts and more extras. The app includes a live lightning tracker, rain / snow / hail forecasts, and the weather forecasts themselves are super accurate. I quite genuinely can’t imagine life before this app!
2. Home And Dry Weather App by MetDesk – £1.49
This has absolutely fantastic animated maps and a brilliant user interface. It feels slick and easy to use and combines real radar data with forecast rain data to give you an all in one animated weather map. It’s a useful app when there are heavy showers about and you want to know if you’re about to get wet or not!
3. Dark Sky Weather App – £2.49
One of the two most expensive weather apps I’m recommending but this is a really fantastic piece of user interface design and a couple of unique features which make it a top pick. Notably it includes a customisable alert setting where you can ask the app to sound an alarm shortly before rain (or snow) is about to arrive at your location. You can even adjust it to only alert you when the rain is heavy, rather than moderate or light. I’d like to see this expanded to thunderstorm alerts. It also includes a mesmerising animated radar map – on a globe which you can rotate, and zoom in on.
4. Forecast.io – £0.79
A beautifully designed app, especially the elegant animated icons. But I’ve found the actual forecasts to not be quite as accurate as our other apps so I’d recommend having a look at this weather app but don’t rely on it for deciding whether to plan a BBQ this weekend! This one actually feels very similar to Dark Sky – if anyone has any info on if these are related I’d love to know.
5. BBC Weather App – FREE
The BBC weather app feels BBC, looks BBC and delivers reliable BBC forecasts. Sometimes wonderfully detailed and accurate – sometimes a shade off the mark but a great one to rely on and after all it’s FREE! It’s missing two things for me, an animated radar, probably the most useful bit of any weather app, and weather warnings should be delivered as push notificatioons too. One other thing, I’d also love to see the weather symbols fall off the screen occasionally. Or am I showing my age saying that?!
6. Met Office Weather – FREE
The Met Office weather app is appealing from the point of view it offers a unique interface compared to the other weather apps, includes localised weather alerts built in (as long as you have push notifications switched on) and is accurate, as you’d expect. From a personal point of view I don’t like the radar as much as our top two – it doesn’t feel as slick and zooming in feels awkward so when I’m trying to figure out if I should walk or drive to the park with the kids today I don’t rely on this app. I also don’t find the user interface quite as intuitive as some of the others. Definitely has it’s uses though and worth a look.
So in summary I’d say the best weather app for iPhone overall is WeatherPro, and that probably ties for best free weather app for iPhone with the BBC weather app. So which is the best weather radar app? I’d have to say that this is a tie between the Home and Dry app and Dark Sky.
