Weather Apps and a Fun Link

First the fun link: a Slate magazine article on the origin of what exactly "tastes like chicken." For those of us with adventurous palates see if you agree!

I now have 12 weather apps which is probably about 8 more than I will ever actually use. My basic three are pretty much interchangeable unless you really, really want one of their special features. My Number 1 choice is Fahrenheit which comes in a free (ad supported) or paid version. Its gimmick is an icon that always shows the current temperature even when the app is closed. It opens with a pretty page that gives a ten day forecast with maximum and minimum temperatures, the typical sunny cloudy icons, and wind speed and direction. It also has picture of the current moon phase. Click on a day and a drop down menu gives you detailed forecasts for the day in three hour increments. The drop down for the current day gives additional information like the "feels like" temperature Icons along the bottom open animated predicted weather maps for cloud cover, temperature, precipitation, and wind for the whole east coast. It's such an elegant little app that it is all most of us will ever need.

Of course, I had to have two other apps that do mostly the same thing. One is the Accuweather app. Accuweather is the company that provides weather information for many radio stations including WBZ. This app also comes in a paid or free version. The front page is similar to Fahrenheit. A click on the current day opens the Accuweather.com website which is like a newspaper about weather keyed to your locality. Back at the front page a touch on a small circle opens an icon bar that opens up some fun things including a clock you can click for an hourly local forecast, access to weather forecast videos for the whole country, a so-so satellite map, hurricane tracking, and a lifestyle page. The lifestyle page tells you things like today is a great day to fly a kite with low migraine risk and high hair frizz risk. Today the fishing forecast is fair. When it was excellent on Saturday, I actually caught fish!

The last app is free and its advertising is pretty unobtrusive. This is the Weather App from NECN (NECN WX HD). It has two pages and you can decide which will be the opening page. I keep it on the map page. This has a small ad in one corner with basic ten day and hour forecast next to it. Most of the page is devoted to a radar mosaic map which you can customize. One of the choices is a patented road condition report which this morning showed fog in central Mass and just south of here. On the forecast page you get more detailed information including an hourly forecast that includes predictions on humidity, wind direction, and visibility. You also learn that the moon is in a waxing gibbous phase and sun and moon rise and set times. Sunset is 6:35 so dusk will last until 6:59 tonight (although Accuweather assures us the mosquito threat is relatively low even though the temperature is expected to be about 63 at 7 pm.

OK, three good choices for all around weather apps. I'll add three more apps quickly. One is Hurricane Track for IOS which replaces those old hurricane tracking charts we used to follow when we were kids. It gives you satellite and radar imagery, NOAA storm track information, and updates on all tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes. Another specialty app is called BuoyData which gives you information from all the weather buoys and tide stations in the US. Nice if you are a weather crazy following a storm or someone who owns a boat. The last app is called SnowForecast which takes up the difficult challenge of using Doppler radar and other data to forecast snow. You'll be happy to know that the closest snow storm will be in Alaska tomorrow, but less happy to learn that northern Quebec already has snow on the ground. Looks like this one might be useful-we shall see.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the weather radar and weather modelling apps that will let out your inner Don Kent.