If you’ve heard it never rains in Southern California you may get your proof once you download The Weather Channel App. By default this geo-location weather app gives you information based on your current locale. If you want info on a place you’re traveling to simply type in city, state, or zip code. You’ll have instant local weather information including current conditions, hourly conditions, all the way through to a 10-day weather forecast.
If tracking the weather is your interest, The Weather Channel app has a complete map to explore the weather patterns in your area. It also includes local and international video forecasts. For locations with severe weather alerts the app has a dedicated information button. Visually it’s easy to read and the information buttons are easy to navigate. Those unfamiliar with reading weather in Celsius can change the temperature scale to Fahrenheit to feel more comfortable.
There are a few drawbacks. If you’re not into ads in apps you might think twice about this one. The Weather Channel has a couple of advertisements for programs on its television channel splashed at the bottom of a few of the information pages. It’s static and unobtrusive but never the less it’s still there.
The app’s map is a great resource however on some occasions it did take a while to completely load. And there isn’t an animated radar function on the map a feature that seems pretty standard. The video forecasts seems like a great added feature, but at 9am the forecast from the day before was still playing. The font is also pretty small so anyone with who has trouble reading tiny type will have problems.
Overall, the The Weather Channel app is free and seems to do a reasonably good job of providing the most up to date weather information based on location. It consistently loaded pretty quickly in all areas except the map. The videos are a nice touch but not entirely necessary if you can read. The Weather Channel app is only slightly more functional than the pre-loaded weather app on the iPhone. In fact, some might consider the pre-loaded one better. Sometimes simple is better.
