It's taken its sweet time this year, but the nasty weather certainly has been ramping up lately.
Anyone who lives in Arkansas knows we don't have four seasons -- we have about 15. Winter, spring, still winter, tornado season one, back to winter, tornado season two, spring for five minutes, insanely hot summer, tornado season three ... you get the idea.
where it’s @
Storm, WunderStation and Weather Underground apps are all available for free on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with iOS 8 or later. Weather Underground is available for Android 4.0 and higher. The app is free. More information on Weather Underground apps is available at wunderground.com/do….
In general, we tend to get our nastiest weather in April and May. April had a few nasty pockets, but it was relatively quiet for the most part. May, however, is swinging the other way with storms and lots of rain.
I've been testing a few apps from a well-known provider of all things weather, Weather Underground. Some of these apps are a bit over-the-top on weather nerdom, but they all provide information that can be beneficial, even life-saving, in severe weather.
The first up is Storm, possibly my favorite. Storm is a high-powered radar system that allows you to see real-time radar and satellite readouts, storm tracks and severe weather warnings. It has layers that can be applied to the radar, including watch and warning plots, front locations and wind stream. It will even show the locations of local weather stations.
The radar itself not only shows movement for the past hour, but it plots future movement as well, though every once in a while the iPhone app balked a bit at displaying this. The app also allows you to pick a specific radar site and provides real-time radar sweeps from that site.
This app is great because it not only provides the radar, but it provides current conditions and a forecast along the bottom of the screen. Pulling the conditions list upward reveals a full 10-day forecast as well as extra current readings such as visibility, air pressure, dew point and humidity.
The storm tracking feature is fantastic. A quick tap on a storm track (which looks like a cone coming out from the storm) brings up a window showing the cities in the path of the storm and the times the storm likely will arrive there. It also provides accurate readings on the movement of the storm, so you know if it's speeding up, slowing down or changing direction.
The Storm app has a feature on its radar that I love: the ability to change the radar's Tilt. Basically, this means you change to a reading that's a bit higher in the atmosphere. The advantage of this is you tend to remove a lot of that nasty "ground clutter" of dust and pollen that sometimes masks the rain readings. The downside is you might miss rain, drizzle or other things that are lower in the sky. The higher the Tilt number, in general, the higher in the atmosphere the radar beam is moving.
The good news is, Storm is available for the iPhone and iPad. The bad news is, it isn't available for Android. Hopefully, that will be fixed soon. The radar also isn't quite as detailed as those in RadarScope, my most-used weather app. It also doesn't have the long list of radar types available for viewing like RadarScope. Still, it has many other advantages, including the satellite view sorely lacking in RadarScope.
Storm is free, but with ads. You can purchase an in-app subscription to eliminate the ads. The subscription is only $1.99 a year. The app is worth more than $2, so spending a little money to eliminate the ads at the top of the screen was no big deal to me.
For those who want to get readings from as close as possible, WunderStation offers a way to do so, and even share your own. It provides a wealth of data, from current conditions to a recent history of rainfall and temperature. It plots local and personal weather stations and allows you to see the data being gathered from each of them. You can even register your own compatible weather station. I was able to register my Netatmo weather station, though it was a complicated process.
WunderStation may be a bit over the top for those with only a passing interest in the weather, but it comes in handy if you're wanting to know exactly how close a storm may be.
Like Storm, WunderStation is only available for now on the iOS platform.
Android users aren't completely left out. The main Weather Underground app provides a wealth of information on one screen. It includes the current conditions, forecast, weather alerts and radar. The radar screen includes storm tracks, though not to as much detail as in the Storm app. It does include other layers for the radar, such as satellite, front position and severe weather watches and warnings plots. The app also is available for iOS.
There is one more platform where you can find the Weather Underground app -- the Roku. For those with the streaming media device attached to their televisions, the Weather Underground app provides the latest forecast, as well as current radar and satellite images. It also has a tab to connect to local or regional webcams, but I couldn't get it to work properly. However, for those who have cut the cord, the Weather Underground app does provide updated information at the touch of a button.
Overall, these free apps provide a wealth of information for anyone interested in the weather, from certified storm chasers to someone just wondering if they should put the car in the garage for the night. It certainly never hurts to have information like this available at a moment's notice. After all, this is Arkansas. As we say, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.
Melissa L. Jones can be reached via email at mljones72@me.com.
SundayMonday Business on 05/11/2015