My weather tools on iPhone and ipad. Weather Lab - 3D radar for iPhone and ipad.

[Allen Lieberman]

It will be interesting to see what weather apps others use. I have created this thread to share what weather related apps I use on iPhone and ipad. I fly a small plane for a hobby so weather is a rather critical element of a successful flight. The apps that I put in this thread will be a combination of aviation and weather apps, but all of them contain weather. I will highlight the weather aspect of weather in aviation apps I put in here and post good bad and ugly experience as appropriate.

Came across this gem of a radar program for apple products in the past few weeks.. If this is a duplicate posting of weather lab, my apologies, I did glance through recent postings and didn’t see this app talked about. This is weather technology at it’s finest. It is called weather lab.

Weather Lab - 3D by GeoLab Weather LLC
‎Weather Lab - 3D

I created a video of it’s capability. I created the video somewhat early in my learning curve of this app as I have found so much more it can do so please bear with my amateurish approach to it. I may try to create another video with voice over explanations of what I displayed in the video below.

Couple of things to note. The base program cost 2 bucks and only gives reflectivity with no further ongoing expense. If 3D radar is all you want, the 2 bucks will more than suffice for your needs. If you want the velocity and other advanced radar products, you will need the 10 buck yearly subscription. This is well worth the money as you will see in this video and brings out the power house capability of this radar program.

I’m just a satisfied consumer, no relationship to any of the apps in this thread. Video link is below for weather lab. (No sound in video)

 

[Allen Lieberman]

RadarOmega

RadarOmega by Storm Damage Services, INC
‎RadarOmega

This app is a new app that directly competes with Radar Scope. It is not as refined as radar scope but it just came out and I am sure will be refined as developer is adding additional features in the future per his apple store description and Facebook page.

RadarOmega includes lightning data and scrubber in the base price of 9 bucks where radar scope charges extra for this. There is no subscription based mode for Radar Omega as of this post but based on past correspondence with developer, new features may come out as subscription base.

As stated above, this app is not refined as radar scope, menu interactions are somewhat cumbersome but doable. It shows storm spotter data like Radar scope. The radar display on my iPad Pro is not as good as Radar scope (seems pixelated a bit).

Overall, it’s a great program with additional features that RadarScope doesn’t have in it’s base app price. Would I recommend replacing RadarScope with this program. Jury still out on this so I use both for now using features in RadarOmega not available to me in RadarScope.

Screenshots of RadarOmega is below.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Allen, there is a similar thread here that also mentions Weather Labs

Phone apps for the 2019 chase season

Now is a good time to reevaluate phone apps for the 2019 chase season. Below is a my list. Please feel free to add your list along with comments and suggestions on chase use including radar, photo and other apps. My list (Android) RadarScope (Pro Tier One) My main radar app. I like having the...

stormtrack.org

 

[Allen Lieberman]

Allen, there is a similar thread here that also mentions Weather Labs

Phone apps for the 2019 chase season

Now is a good time to reevaluate phone apps for the 2019 chase season. Below is a my list. Please feel free to add your list along with comments and suggestions on chase use including radar, photo and other apps. My list (Android) RadarScope (Pro Tier One) My main radar app. I like having the...

stormtrack.org

Thanks for this pointer James! I missed weather lab. as it was on page 2 of the thread and I had an oh DUH moment not clicking on page 2. Still I think this post may bring out more attention to the app as even if I had clicked on the page 2 link, the brief mention of it would have been easy to overlook this app.

The difference between this thread and the thread I am creating is that I will post weather apps beyond just chasing. I don’t chase per se, unless you call going to a place where I get clear line of sight walking distance from my house

I try to search before posting as I know certain things can be redundant and I’d hate to add to the redundancy whenever possible.

 

[Allen Lieberman]

Less is more for me. The simpler the app, sometimes the more information I get.

iRain UCI by University of California, Irvine
‎iRain UCI

Very simple rain total app with attention to detail of resolution. I use this to see if my rain gauge is consistent with reported rain in my area. Yes, it may be backwards in my approach for verification.

This app allows you to submit rain reports that would not be permissible in the Storm spotter network. In my screenshot below, I made a moderate rain report that shows up in the screenshot below.

This app is not a radar app, it’s just a historical data app showing how much rain fell within the past 72 hours nationwide. Bottom of screen shows how much rain fell in 3 hour increments and bottom right icon is where I access submit reports.

 

[Allen Lieberman]

If you miss weather maps with fronts, then the app Navmonster may be the app for you.

NavMonster by Plane Media
‎NavMonster

It’s a very basic app on first glance giving you 3 choices to start with. To quickly start, just select the third choice and you will get a host of weather related information with one tap of a button. The absolute best feature for me is the prognostic maps. It will pull up the next 7 days worth of synoptic maps and you just swipe left to view the maps. It gives you the clearest insight of forecasted movement of highs, lows and fronts for the next 7 days. I don’t know of an app that does this so eloquently.

Winds aloft is another feature I like about this app. It puts the winds in a chart format, simple to read unlike a SKEWT chart.

Pros of this app listed above. Along with the above, if you are going to take a commercial flight, if you use the first option in the main menu, you can get information quickly on flight conditions in a quick fashion by just putting in your departure and arrival airports (I.E. KJAN KBWI).

Pilot reports are great to look at as they report flight conditions.

Cons of this app is that this is an aviation themed app. Forecast discussions give only the aviation section of the NWS discussions. You will need to use another app to get the full AFD issued by NWS. This app is not representative of a full official flight briefing so if you are looking for a detailed flight briefing, another app is essential in your flight tool kit. Radar in this app is lame, giving composite images in sectors of the country.

3 images of the app are provided below.

 

[Allen Lieberman]

A really nice RadarOmega upgrade was released yesterday. Looks like app developer is holding to his word for new and exciting upgrades.

This latest upgrade will be incredibly useful for winter weather. You now can overlay components of METAR data right on the radar images. This will be really nice validation of hygrometer classification since you can view the current METAR at the radar reporting site by just taping on the overlay selection you put on the radar image.

One image shows METAR components you can select, second one shows the temperature component on the radar and the third image shows the entire METAR in plain English.

 

[Allen Lieberman]

If you are interested in reported damage or weather that is potentially dangerous, you may want to consider using hazard notifier.

Hazard Notifier by ITDT LLC
‎Hazard Notifier

I am not sure where the data is extracted from but the app does allow for the ability to submit reports that includes categories not allowed in the spotter network. I find it useful for severe weather events especially in far counties upstream from me. Notifications are completely customizable in sound of alert to triggering the alert by distance. It is nice on the audible alerts having different sounds for each type of severe weather category.

Pros of this app is the customization of sounds per alert, seems pretty timely on alerts when severe weather happens. It is a free app with ads to help support it. I’ve got an ad blocker on my ipad so I don’t see ads on any app or my web browser so I don’t know how intrusive the ads are. Alerts are overlayed on a composite radar image.

Cons of this app, if you are allergic to ads, get benedryl (AKA adblocker). Alerts take time to customize on first set up but well worth it to avoid excessive alerts. Alerts are excessive if you don’t customize alerts.

Since the app is free, only cost to one getting it is time.

 

[Allen Lieberman]

Some really nice sources of weather information are included in aviation flight planners. While most flight planners have a 30 day trial period, there is one that remains free after 30 days albeit lacks some features that the subscription based version gives. What is nice about using flight planners is that the aim of the app is to combine many sources of weather into one place in a timely basis. This app is called Aerovie

Aerovie, electronic flight bag by Aerovie, LLC
‎Aerovie, electronic flight bag

Pros of this app is you get a highly customizable map of the USA. Many different overlays can be put on the map including METARS from every weather reporting airport. This program gives basic information that pilots use on a day to day basis with the option to delve into details such as SKEWT observations. The app does give model forecast in a public forecast format. The app does a reasonably good job in keeping weather features apart from the flight planning feature. This is a professional grade app used by the jet jockeys that sit on the pointy end of your commercial flight. This app can be used inside an airplane if you do take a commercial flight as it has offline capability (be sure to have a window seat). The first 30 days using this app gives you access to ALL features allowing you to evaluate if you want to use the subscription service. The app developer is quick to answer any question on the app.

Ive enjoyed watching out the airplane window and looking on my ipad and seeing the radar and how it looks outside the airplane window. You will need a GPS enabled device such as a new iPad or phone. NO cell service needed, even newer Wi-Fi only tablets have a GPS chip will work inside an airplane.

Cons of this app. It is a steep learning curve on becoming proficient in using this app but it is well worth the effort for all the weather information this app provides. It has a lot of aviation flight planning features that you will have to filter out to find the weather related stuff. This app will require newer tablets and phones to run this app as it is a feature rich app.

My screenshots include a commercial flight I am taking this coming weekend hence the purple track line on one of my screenshots.

 

[Allen Lieberman]

Fun little paid app I came across for the iPhone yesterday. (works on iPad as well.)

Anemometer for phone by Marcello Fiore
‎Anemometer for phone

Does it hold up to NWS standards for measuring wind speed? Nope, I can safely say this. It does a fairly good job on measuring wind using the microphone of the ipad or iPhone. No additional hardware needed.

Pros of this app.
Gives you wind estimates without additional hardware on your phone.
Nice and convenient when you need a guesstimate of wind speeds or to help you justify your own estimations.

Cons of this app.
It uses the microphone of your device. This means ANY external noise will make readouts of wind speeds higher than actual wind speeds. I was able to verify this using my hand held anemometer vs this app.

I was in a moving car and my hand held anemometer matched my car speed within a couple of mph. The iPhone app registered consistently 5 to 10 mph higher than my hand held device. I attribute this to road noise / tire noise as I was in a convertible.

Talking while measuring will make the app register a higher speed as your voice is picked up by the microphone and app thinks this is additional wind noise.

It’s a fun lil bragging app showing capabilities of iPhone that would have been unimaginable 10 years or so ago.