The best Android weather app

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an app review. That’s because I’ve better things to do with my time than play around with apps. Let’s face it, most of them are just excuses for badly coded websites, which don’t serve up a mobile version automatically, like this blog does. For example, Sussex Police. They tell me that they have realised their mistake and are now planning on coding a mobile version of their site. What is their problem? Their website is shit. It contains police blogs which make no attempt to join the rest of the blogosphere. Anyone could make a better version of their entire site in a day, using WordPress. They’ve been told but they don’t want to know. Presumably, they’d rather waste money on web developers than catching criminals.

Of course, Iphones refuse to let you see anything in Flash, so if you’ve got one of those you cannot see much of the web and need a different app for a vast number of websites. If you’re an Android user, you can just surf the web unhindered but there are still functions which require a specialist app because they involve data sets not easily available on the web.

The one app I did get recently is Weatherbomb. You specify your location, download data packs for various types of information and then ‘refresh’ the data set. It’s gorgeous to look at. Here’s the instructions on how to use it.

Weatherbomb Instructions

Obviously, I’m not particularly interested in the weather in Auckland. I am interested in Brighton. Here’s the humidity map.

Weatherbomb Humidity

Rainfall is more important for the allotment gardener. I love the way the colour-coded rain intensity swirls around Europe. It feels like you’ve got a proper weather computer in your hand! Hang on a minute…

Weatherbomb Rain

None of this is much use, unless you know which way the wind is blowing. This is dealt with by means of little arrows. Since the wind direction is so important, you can overlay the wind direction onto any of the other maps. The arrows also show wind intensity, which is measured in knots. Each dot behind the arrow represents 5 knots. It’s not so easy to see on the zoomed out map.

Weatherbomb Wind

Pressure isn’t something I’m terribly interested in but here it is anyway.

Weatherbomb Pressure

Here’s what the clouds look like, with the wind arrows laid over the top.

Weatherbomb Cloud

Here’s the metric which the British are most obsessed with. With the winter we’re just emerging from, I’m getting a bit obsessed with it too.

Weatherbomb Temperature

Wave height is an unusual feature to see in a weather map. It’s handy for surfers or anyone who might go into or over the sea. Oddly, the zoomed out view makes it look like the South-West of England has been washed away, even by fairly small waves.

Weatherbomb Wave Height

Finally, here’s the zoomed in version. This is as close as you can get.

Weatherbomb Zoom

Oddly, this app is said to be in beta. That’s a rather over used term these days. It even comes with a safety warning! Why is everyone so frightened of litigation? Who’s going to court saying, “I want money because I got wet when I didn’t think it was going to rain.”

Originally, you couldn’t zoom in at all. I left a review saying I would give it more stars if they added zoom and they did! Here’s the developer’s video.