As the sky dumps an endless supply of the white powdery stuff here in the Midwest, my thoughts turn to weather sites and tools. There are quite a few of them out there, and they all have their positives and negatives. Here's a look at the notable ones:
Weather Sites
Accuweather.com
http://www.accuweather.com
My current favorite. Lots of great data and maps, with a moderate amount of advertising. Nice hour-by-hour charts.
Weather.com (The Weather Channel)
http://www.weather.com
Good information but such a clunky, ad-heavy page that I often look elsewhere. You're better off using a site that uses weather.com's data like cnn.com.
Weatherunderground.com
http://www.weatherunderground.com
A bit amateurish-looking, but information-rich, weatherunderground looks like a site built by weather geeks. One standout feature is the "Zoom Satellite" which allows you to zoom in and out of an animated map. Very cool.
Intellicast.com
http://www.intellicast.com Solid, if unspectacular site.
Weather Tools
Weatherbug
The best tool out there. Great radar maps, webcams, and detailed forecasts. Be careful configuring alerts though. It can become a bit of a nuisance. Advertising is limited to a big banner ad at the bottom of the interface, which you at least get to choose when installing.
Desktop Weather (The Weather Channel)
Popular tool with some great features. I'm a big fan of the weather trend chart that shows the hourly temperature changes over 12 hours. With the bells and whistles comes a lot of advertising and fluffy garbage that mars an otherwise nifty interface.
WeatherPulse
Popular tool uses weather.com data in a very simple and clean interface. Not a lot of bells and whistles.
1 comment:
Love this blog and found this weather feature interesting. I had preferred the standard Desktop Weather tool from the weather channel. I will now be checking out these others for comparison as I have none installed at this time.
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