What the Tech: Weather Underground App
Central Illinois has finally reached record numbers of snowfall for this year, or at least it feels like it. Unfortunately, there will be days where spring starts to rear its shy head before winter comes right back and piles us with snow. (I’m looking at you, week of February 24th!) One issue with unfortunate weather is how it will affect travel. ICC students come from all across the Central Illinois area, and with that comes completely different ways of handling snow removal from roads. Luckily, the new app Weather Underground, available free from both the Android and Apple App Stores, has the perfect solution for weather conundrums.
Weather Underground works by funneling local crowd reports of weather conditions into one streamlined application. This allows users to easily find what is happening within their area in terms of precipitation, temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity, hazardous road conditions, or if the sun is shining bright. This works in two ways, radio and through the application itself.
Radio reports are provided by official weather services, airports, and individuals who own personal weather stations sponsored by Weather Underground. The application itself allows users to respond to the accuracy of a weather report. For instance, the application will tell me that the sky is clear, and I can verify that report or counter it with a factual description from a drop down list of provided conditions. The second option the application allows is for users to report road conditions by their location. The GPS functions on phones allows for this seamless integration and allows for other users to see where road dangers will arise on their trips.
Of course, the application leaves a lot of the details out of the picture in terms of quantitative weather analysis. However, this lack of depth in the application allows users to get their feet wet in being amateur meteorologists while also giving them accurate reports of conditions around them. My one drawback from this part of the application is the user base. As of this print, there have not been many crowd sponsored reports in the Central Illinois area besides my own and maybe one or two others. This leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its proper use. However, the relatively young age of this application can be blamed for its current lack of popularity.
The application itself is streamlined to the max and provides a key to the symbolized representations of the weather. This is a great addition because it allows the user to easily find the information they are looking for without having to spend time scrolling through the screen. The application also includes a setting to have your choice of the aforementioned the weather stations play in the background as the application is open.
Overall, this application provides an interesting avenue for anyone to be a amateur weatherman or weather woman while still giving the user appropriate and accurate weather reports to digest. One final note of warning, the application does not work so great while not connected to Wi-Fi, but as I only tested the application on an IPhone 4S with 3G from Sprint, it may perform differently on another device. As a free app, Weather Underground is definitely worth a try, especially in weather crazy Central Illinois.