Best weather app

Looking for the best weather app for general outdoors use. Here is my experience with what I have used:

Climbing weather - buggy and sometimes exaggerated forecasts

Caltopo or Gaia layers - hard to read, not specific

Normal Weather app - not specific enough

NOAA website - the best and able to pinpoint a forecast. Love the written description and also the charts with precip/temp/freezing point/cloud cover etc. The only issue is for phone/mobile it is a pain to go to a browser to use these features. The app version is clunky and has a ton of ads

Are there any apps that are user friendly and give you all the information from the NOAA website for a pinpoint location?

Thanks in advance,

-Matt

Windy is the bomb!

Big fan of MyRadar have used it on many road trips to avoid weather, and will even send you notifications if certain weathers approaching!

Windy and Meteoblue both compile all the different forecast models into their product (including the NOAA model), and also allow you to see the forecast from each specific model. The one model I've found consistently most accurate is the ECMWF hi-res, so I tend to look at that one most closely when I use either Windy or Meteoblue.

If you want just the NOAA forecast, there's an app called, "NOAA Weather & Tides" that gives all the same info from the NOAA site in a mobile-friendly format. It allows you to "favorite" locations on a map and then have a shortcut to the spot forecast and forecast discussion. There's also a map to select a location, and also display overlays of radar, precip, etc.

Weather.gov has been the most reliable for me in the Front range - I like the point forecasts and hourly forecasts with cloud cover and wind. I make point forecasts for various climbing areas then just bookmark the pages.

I've used Windy but some of their models are unreliable - ECMWF in particular is always super pessimistic about the weather around here, consistently forecasts 10 to 20 degrees colder, windy, cloudy, and rain/snow. NAM tends to be okay, as is HRRR, but both have very short forecast windows.

I use an app based off weather.gov that has a climbing specific mode. 

Snarf

Matt Schilowitz wrote:

Looking for the best weather app for general outdoors use. Here is my experience with what I have used:

Climbing weather - buggy and sometimes exaggerated forecasts

Caltopo or Gaia layers - hard to read, not specific

Normal Weather app - not specific enough

NOAA website - the best and able to pinpoint a forecast. Love the written description and also the charts with precip/temp/freezing point/cloud cover etc. The only issue is for phone/mobile it is a pain to go to a browser to use these features. The app version is clunky and has a ton of ads

Are there any apps that are user friendly and give you all the information from the NOAA website for a pinpoint location?

Thanks in advance,

-Matt

You can add a shortcut for the NOAA forecast you want on your home screen so it’s just a single click from then on.

It WAS Darksky weather then Apple bought it out and incorporated it into apple weather, removing any and all useful and well thought features. I’m still grumpy about that. 

sendex

Right click or long press on a location within Caltopo will display a link to the NOAA forecast for that location.

Different apps will provide better or worse forecast for certain locations depending on which underlying model they use, there is no one best app. Personally for a quick glimpse I generally use weather-underground/weather-channel as it works "pretty" well for my area which is hard to forecast precisely. If I want more detailed forecast I will look directly at the model output, from University of Washington, or euro model from some place like Pivotal weather.

In order of ease of use and increasing amount of info provided;

1. iOS weather app - easy, free, fast
2. Weather.gov / Weather Underground - easy, free, fast with more info and data
3. Windy App - not as easy, I pay for the premium, and slower if you actually compare all of the different models, GFS, NAM, ECMWF, etc.. - This is my go to for most things.
4. Weather  charts - US Navy's WX prediction Center  - Slow, free, generally the most informative, need some basic understanding of WX forecasting. 
5. Meteotest.ch - Paid service for personalized forecasts for specific mountains/regions.  Expensive but worth the money if your climbing trip has a 6 (or even 7 figure)  $$ budget...

Thank you for all the insightful responses. Right now my favorite option is the press and hold to link to the NOAA forecast from Caltopo. The hourly forecast graphs usually tell me everything I want to know. Not sure if it matters much but I usually am looking for forecasts in the Sierra, California and other western states.

Windy looks good but I was hoping to stick with a free option for as long as I can. I will test the free trial on my spring trip and see if it’s worth it. My expeditions don’t have 6 or 7 figure budgets :( But Mikey I’m interested in that if you know of any opportunities! Can anyone comment on if it’s much better than the NOAA forecast and in which ways? Is it worth $120 a year?

SpotWx is a free option that has a lot of models of various resolutions. Would fill a similar niche as Windy but isn't as polished and I don't think it has a mobile app. 

I typically just use the Weather Underground 10-day.  If I'm going to be out for a while, I'll eventually just be relying on forecast updates via my InReach, but I greatly prefer the format of the WU 10-day, even if it means doing lapse rate stuff in my head to account for elevation differences.  I just prefer to see the trends as a continuous series of functions, and WU does that.

And, if in doubt, or looking for something more detailed ... I can just message my uncle, a meteorologist by education.

Prior to a decent road trip, I'll send out a file to several points-of-contact that has not just an itinerary, but hyperlinks to things like the specific WU forecast locations, as well as NASA FIRMS links for wildfires, etc.  You can't reasonably talk someone through the process via InReach - so I make sure my POCs have simple pre-prepared links they can click, and they can give me a quick text summary of what they see - yeah, an over reliance on interpretation and subjectivity with that last step, but something, something, you get what you pay for. : )

Meteoblue forever

My first check is climbit score now, then I dial it in with another weather app. play.google.com/store/apps/…

All these apps are just displaying the same models run by NOAA and the Europeans, right? But our government has decided to collect fewer data. So presumably apps relying on HRRR are going to suffer more than those based on global scale models that are losing a smaller percentage of their data? Anyone have any insight into which models are going to suffer more than others?

My homie Garrett. He just tastes the air and tells me what’s gonna happen. Only works at the home crag though.

Meteoblue forever though

NOAA Weather Unofficial Pro by Granite Apps on Android. There's probably a iPhone version as well. 

I have multiple pinpoint forecasts that I rename to the climbing destination. Hourly precipitation and wind speed data available. Radar as well. I think it was $2 one time purchase. 

Quite a few years ago, I was at the Chief parking lot asking around for forecasts since we didn’t have cell service (us carrier) and it was kind of drizzling on and off in town. We were a bit concerned we had just wasted a good amount of time traveling to climb on wet rock when someone told us to “talk to that guy.” 

He pointed to a skinny white dude with mangy hair sticking out of a stoner beanie. The dude was sitting on a rug laid out on the asphalt in front of his van, heating up some water. We approached and greeted him. He took a drag of his half smoked spliff and with a French accent said “‘Ello.”

We got to chatting about the weather and he assured us that the weather in town would not touch the walls of the chief as it’s in a different micro climate. He went on to talk about the cool temps coming off the sound not being able to withstand the force of the chief. He used some jargon of sorts and pointed in various directions explaining something or other and we thanked him.

We proceeded to have a dry day of climbing. 

He’s the best app.

Ps. Later that day, I ran into Sonnie Trotter and we talked about how the weather was difficult to predict and proceeded to share the above story with him. He said “oh yeah, that’s so and so.”  And he confirmed his weather forecasting abilities.