Everyone wants a good and hassle-free vacation. You can prepare all the details of your trip, but there are still things out of your control that can ruin it. On top of that list is the unexpected weather. Unforeseen heavy rain showers, excessive heat and snow storms can seriously derail and dampen any travel plans.
Nowadays though, you are more empowered than ever to prepare and adjust your travel plans, thanks to excellently designed weather apps. Here are five of the best free weather apps to help make your next trip a little more enjoyable.
The AccuWeather app has all the weather tracking essentials and then some. What they’re most known for is their personalization feature where users can set their screen contents based on their preference. You can rearrange sections or hide unwanted features with just a quick swipe.
It offers extensive and immersive maps of your current and intended locations. Users can input specific locations to find out when precipitation will stop and start. It even gives out daily prediction alerts for severe weather and forecasted weather in the next few days.
Most importantly, it is a free app available in iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows platforms. You can access the app through this website.
The Weather Channel’s selling point is its simple interface. It is packed with the fundamental weather tracking tools but wrapped in an easy to manage package.
Another advantage of The Weather Channel is the “Social Weather” feature. It is a Waze-like weather reporting service that allows users to select from a row of icons to best represent general weather conditions in the area, e.g. sunny, cloudy and so forth. All entries are automatically submitted to The Weather Channel report and will be readily available for other users to see. Users have the option to add photos as well.
This app is free and available on iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows platforms. Since it is a free app, ads are well placed at the bottom of the screen and don’t block the app’s features.
Similar to all weather monitoring apps, WeatherBug is full of tracking tools for precipitation and air quality. What makes this app special is the Spark feature. Spark is an up to the minute local lightning tracker that can let you know where and when lightning is striking in real-time.
This app is free and available on iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Since it’s free, there are scrolling ads at the bottom of the page. You can have an ad-free experience by upgrading to a paid service for an additional fee.
1Weather provides an abundance of information – from short term to long term weather forecasts, precipitation predictions and animated radar maps. It has essential weather tracking features. The app offers real-time local weather for millions of locations worldwide and even gives severe weather alerts for U.S. locations.
It is currently available for Android and Apple users. Apple users can get an additional feature of sharing 1Weather information via email, SMS, Twitter, and Facebook. Additional details and features can be checked through their website.
Yahoo! Weather is the best free option for Android users. Unlike other free apps, this app doesn’t have any annoying ads and is more polished than most paid weather apps in Android.
This app holds the Yahoo! name with pride. Even with its simplicity, users can have weather forecasts from hourly updates to a ten-day preview. It packs the regular weather essentials such as current conditions and precipitation forecasts.
