Tech

5 best weather apps to keep you warm and dry

5 best weather apps to keep you warm and dry
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Temperatures are steadily dropping as autumn settles in, and it's vital to know whether you're looking at sweater weather or need a full-on coat to brave the day.

Related: Check out our top water pitcher picks to keep you hydrated and cool.

Most top weather predicting apps will offer you similar features such as localized and nation or international forecasts, alerts for inclement weather, and customizable settings to best view your area, but many work more smoothly when you plop down a few bucks through either a one-time investment or renewable subscription the takes away advertisements and introduces several premium advantages. Read on to see several of the best options from the app store and which align with your wants and needs best.

You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn a commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing, expert advice and our own research. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

Weather Channel App

The top pick around the world is naturally the Weather Channel app, which promises reliable forecasts, interactive radar and real-time rain alerts delivered straight to your phone so you’re never caught in a surprise downpour during an otherwise lovely outdoors stroll or commute. One converted user exclaims: “As soon as I downloaded this app my life changed. View the radar when storms are coming, videos about current weather and environment news, warning and watch notifications for changes in weather... it’s amazing!”

The app is free to download and stays that way if you opt to keep the ads, but you can plop down just $10 per year or $1 per month to make them go away and give yourself a more seamless, quicker experience when glancing at the weather.

Weather Channel
$0.99

MyRadar

If praise like “The best and easiest app out there, period,” and, “Just outstanding, none better,” aren’t enough to convince you MyRadar is a fantastic choice for all your weather-tracking needs, take a look at their website to see the sleek setup and gorgeous visuals that pop up when you open the app that help you determine what you’re up against when heading out for the day.

MyRadar promises, “hi-definition radar, as well as NOAA weather alerts, temperatures, forecasts, and a detailed hurricane tracker,” and they note that users can share their own weather pictures for a sense of shared community if you’re not one to simply glance and go. One of the top selling points is advanced rain alerts, meaning you’re far less likely to be ducking for cover because you didn’t see a storm coming.

Like the Weather Channel app, MyRadar is free to download with the ability to make in-app purchases and upgrades once you’ve done so. Upgrading to their premium version to get the Hurricane Tracker, the Professional Radar Pack, the Apple Watch app, plus an ad-free experience and more.

MyWeather
$14.99

Dark Sky Weather

Dark Sky will predict up-to-the-minute forecasts using your precise location, and detailed maps show the exact movement of storms in your area so you’re not left trying to figure out whether that dark cloud across town will hit you or swerve just in time. The “Time Machine” feature is also a neat upside, as you can look to the past or future to see historical weather patterns and predictions made based on those and seasonal averages.

Unlike other weather apps, you only pay for Dark Sky Weather once and avoid the subscription renewal each year. One very happy customer summed up their experience in a thorough review by noting, “I tried at least a dozen weather apps after Weather Underground took a turn for the worse and destroyed their app with a horrible update. Most of them were little more than advertising platforms with a little weather thrown in for effect, or they required onerous subscriptions to make the ads go away... Then I gave Dark Sky a look and immediately recognized how intuitive and straight to-the-point the app was for delivering weather information. I like it. Money well spent.”

Dark Sky Weather
$3.99

LOL Humorcast Weather

This app comes with many of the perks standard to upgraded weather apps like accurate hyperlocal forecasting, 7-day forecasts, sharing abilities, and a customizable profanity filter for younger users, but all of this comes packaged with the added entertainment of being hilarious and providing a little lighthearted vulgarity to pick you up when skies are literally gray.

There are tiers to what you can get with LOL Humorcast Weather, starting with $1.99 “super user” and “fun” levels that accelerate to Unlimited 1, which is our recommendation. With this level, you’ll unlock premium themes and quotes, text to speech, weather for multiple locations, and of course an ad-free app. Reviews mostly praise the jokes that come with your daily forecasts, but prudish types beware: some warn they can be a bit raunchy, so only proceed if you’re okay with adult humor.

Humorcast
$9.99

WeatherBug

Another free app that can be made smoother with a small one-time investment, WeatherBug is a fun and easy weather-checking app that offers everything from local forecasts to pollen reports for those who need to prepare for particularly allergen-heavy days. The app includes 18 different weather maps for different conditions such as Doppler radar, lightning, wind, temperature, alerts, pressure, and humidity, and helpful tools like air quality reports and UV index warnings can let you know how to manage your personal health and safety in light of current weather patterns.

“I’ve been using this app for a few months and find it to be the best app for tracking air quality,” one reviewer explains of WeatherBug. “I love that this app can track AQ in ANY part of the world no matter how small or unknown the town/city.” Check it out yourself if breathing clearly is among your top concerns, and ppgrade from the free version to ad-free for only $3.99.

WeatherBug
$3.99
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