Weather apps are useful in many situations, but not all of them are made for the same purpose. Where one might be best for alerting you about nearby hurricanes or tornadoes, another might be tailored for pilots or specialize in tracking the weather for surfers, hikers, or bike riders.
Below are your best options for a variety of situations and weather conditions. Some of these apps are also multi-functional, showing not only rain or snow maps, for example, but also hourly and daily forecasts, wind speeds, allergy information, detailed radar maps, and more. You don’t need a home weather station to know what tomorrow’s weather might bring.
We also keep updated lists of the best iPhone weather apps, the best weather apps for Android, and the best completely free weather apps which has some options for Windows, macOS, and Linux!
AccuWeather: Best for Short-Term and Long-Term Forecasts
AccuWeather is a beast, and is often a Top 10 most downloaded weather app in app stores. It’s perfect for anyone planning to travel soon, work outside, go running, have a picnic, etc. There are two reasons for this: it shows a long, 15-day forecast plus a 4-hour, minute-by-minute forecast.
Long-term forecast includes as much detail as today’s.
Shows allergy information for a week in advance.
Easy to become overwhelmed by all the detail.
Additional features (like no ads and alerts) require a premium account.
You’ll know exactly when it will rain, snow, sleet, and hail before you head out. Plus, the map displays radar from an hour ago to up to two hours in the future, so planning ahead is simple.
The primary screen shows everything you need to know right now: the temperature, what it feels like, the high and low for today, and whether there will be any precipitation in the next few hours.
The menu at the bottom has buttons for the radar, hourly, and daily forecast, and sometimes hurricane information if that’s a current threat. Some apps have you scroll through various menus to find these things, so it’s nice that this one puts them up front. Plus, just a quick scroll later, and you can see what will happen later today, with the hourly and daily forecasts built-in to one long scrollable list, with a graph of the highs and lows for a way to quickly glance at how the temperature will change over time.
AccuWeather also shows when the sun will rise and set; displays whether allergies like tree pollen, dust and dander, grass pollen, and mold are of a high risk; lets you submit a weather condition; lets you track multiple locations around the world; and has trending weather-related news built-in to the app.
However, if that’s just too much to handle at once, you can always edit the way things appear, removing or adding elements to the app that you do or don’t want to see.
The app is free for Android and iOS, but you can upgrade/pay to get more features.
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Weather Underground: Best for Tracking Specific Conditions
While Weather Underground is a great option all around, its Smart Forecasts are what sets it apart. Choose multiple weather conditions—like rain, wind, temperature, and air pollution—that you consider ideal for a specific outdoor task, and this app will show you when is the best time to go outside and do it.
Every Smart Forecast is customizable.
Includes a wealth of other weather details.
Really simple to understand.
Includes ads.
This is the perfect app if you’re in need of knowing when, exactly, you can do things like ride your bike, go running, star gaze, walk, take outdoor pictures, hike, fly a kite, etc.
For example, if you like to ride your bike but want to avoid heavy winds, rain, and 80+ temperatures, you can create your own forecast recipe with those specific conditions. You’ll know the exact hours of the day, and which incoming days, that are best for bike riding.
WU is touted as the world’s most accurate weather service, and gathers its data from hundreds of thousands of personal weather stations all around the world. It includes an interactive map with different views for displaying temperature, radar, satellite, severe weather alerts, heat maps, webcams, hurricanes, and more.
At the very top of the app is the current location with a preview of the radar and an outlook on today’s weather—the current high and low and “feels like” temperature.
As you scroll down through the app you see the 10-day daily and hourly forecast, a temperature graph for a quick glance at how the day will go, followed by today’s air quality index, Smart Forecasts, weather videos, health information (UV index and flu risk), webcams, and then finally hurricane and tropical cyclone information.
You can edit any of those tiles to hide what doesn’t interest you. Weather Underground also lets you move the tiles around to position them however you want, like to have more important ones closer to the top.
This is a free app for iOS and Android users, but you can pay to remove the ads and get extra features like Smart Forecasts and extended hourly forecasts.
Storm Radar: Best for Tornado and Hurricane Alerts
It’s important to have a great quality app for tracking minute details about strong storms, and The Weather Channel’s Storm Radar is just the app for it. Its maps are very detailed and show exactly where a storm is projected to go, and when.
Extensive details about storms.
Several layer options on the interactive map.
Runs smoothly.
Free 15-day forecasts.
Shows advertisements.
Even if you aren’t watching the map live, Storm Radar will send you push notifications at the right time to alert you about upcoming dangerous storms.
The weather map included in Storm Radar is extremely customizable, letting you choose exactly which elements to display. You can pick from radar, satellite, severe weather alerts, temperature, local storm reports, storm tracks, temperature change, hurricane/tropical storm, earthquakes, and/or road weather.
If you tap on a storm to track, you get a full analysis that includes lots of information not normally seen in a weather app. You can see the hot storm index, tornado impact, hail impact, wind impact, flooding impact, mixed-layer CAPE, mixed-layer CIN, mixed-layer lifted index, change in wind velocity, freezing level height, reflectivity, probability of hail, and several other specific details.
The map in Storm Radar can not only show you the storm from a couple of hours ago, and how it moved to where it’s at now, it even shows its projected path over the next six hours.
This weather app is all around very easy to use, despite its massive amount of detail. Just tap anywhere on the map, and you’ll instantly get a pop-up box showing the weather information there; tap the star, and it’ll be added to your list of favorite locations where you can get severe weather alerts and/or notifications for precipitation warnings and lightning alerts.
Storm Radar is free for iOS, but it comes with ads. To remove them and to get other features like full screen capability, lightning tracking, and premium radar layers, you can pay a few dollars every month.
The Storm Android app has been discontinued. The replacement TWC recommends is their other app, The Weather Channel - Radar.
OpenSummit: Best Weather App for Hikers
OpenSummit is the perfect app to have handy for hikes. It’s free for the basic features, and shows weather for over 1,000 locations in the US.
Includes every 14,000-ft peak in Colorado.
Shows hourly weather information.
Some features can only be accessed if you pay.
US locations only.
You can search for a peak by name or browse the map. Add peaks to your wishlist to keep a close eye on weather conditions.
The app includes precipitation (rain and snow), lightning (low, medium, or high chance), temperature, and wind conditions (sustained, gust, or > 30 mph) for the current day and the next day.
Another option is to connect it to your Instagram account so that it can show recent photos taken near every location. There are also safety tips you can read in the app to learn more about hiking best practices, nutrition, and more.
As of right now, only US locations are supported, but they plan to add thousands of international locations.
It’s completely free for Android and iOS, but OpenSummit All-Access grants access to more features, like 5-day hourly forecasts and map layers. You can also view maps on their website.
Tides Near Me: Best for Tracking Ocean Tides
Whether you like to boat, surf, or just hang out at the beach, Tides Near Me is the best app for knowing ahead of time when there will be high and low tides.
Really simple to use yet still informative.
Supports dozens of countries.
The free version includes ads.
Infrequent updates.
Pick a country, city, and tide station, and you’ll be given current information about the last tide and the next tide, plus a look at tides during the rest of the week, and a map of tide stations around the city to compare information between them.
Unlike some weather apps that have multiple purposes, this one is really only ideal for checking on high and low tides. Beyond that, you can see the sunset and moonrise time for each day of the week.
Tides Near Me is free for iOS and Android, but is also available as an ad-free app for a few dollars on both the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android.
ForeFlight Mobile EFB: Most Useful for Pilots
ForeFlight is the perfect weather app for pilots because the whole focus is around flights. Plan a route, and you’ll immediately see if the flight will be affected by weather threats or temporary flight restrictions.
Very comprehensive.
Not hard to use.
Free for one month.
Requires lots of storage space.
Subscriptions are expensive.
Doesn’t work with Android phones.
For accurate results, you can describe the exact aircraft used for your flights. When you do that, the app will automatically download weight and balance information from the FAA, which is helpful if you need to know about weight limits.
You can also import custom KML files into this weather app to overlay on the map, plus create user waypoints, build a pre-flight checklist, and access a logbook for storing and sharing flights, currency information, hours, experience reports, and more.
This app also offers terminal procedure charts, a live moving map with many layer options, hazard awareness, Jeppesen charts, support for avionics and portable ADS-B and GPS receivers, and decoded METARs, TAFs, and MOS forecasts.
It works on iPhone and iPad only. It’s free for 30 days, but to keep using it, you have to subscribe to ForeFlight; prices for individuals range from $120–$360 /year.
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