WeatherWall Mobile for iOS

[Zac Flamig]

WeatherWall Mobile, a level 3 radar app, is now for sale in the Apple app store!

WeatherWall Mobile is a state of the art weather radar display application. Utilizing the vast coverage of the WSR-88D network in the United States we are able to map high-resolution weather information anywhere in the United States.

Unlike other apps which feature low quality pictures of what the weather radar is detecting, this app capitalizes on the high resolution nature of the Level 3 data provided by the US National Weather Service allowing you to zoom right into your city to see what the weather is doing!

Enjoy the smoothed radar reflectivity often found on PC applications? Wish you had it on your iPhone or iPad? Well wish no more, WeatherWall Mobile supports smoothing of radar reflectivity!

Do you often want to look at multiple products coupled together? With WeatherWall Mobile’s native dual panel display you can always see two products! Want the viewing space that only a single panel provides? Two finger swipe to switch to a single panel view!

In addition, if you’re a weather weenie like us you might want to see what is going on with the weather anywhere in the conterminous United States. WeatherWall Mobile makes this easy with its unique national radar mosaic product. Using this feature you can have your local radar loaded in high resolution but still keep track of what is going on in the surrounding regions! The mosaic is updated every 10 minutes so you can always be aware of what the storms are doing!

Do you often wonder if a storm is interacting with local terrain? Or maybe you wonder if the radar is suffering from beam blockage by a mountain? Wonder no more, with WeatherWall Mobile’s terrain underlay you can now see exactly where the mountains, hills and valleys are in relation to the storms!

Tired of viewing cities as just dots on the map? Utilize WeatherWall Mobile’s population density overlay to see where everyone lives in relation to the storm!

Interested in the dual polarization upgrade coming to the National Weather Service radars? WeatherWall Mobile has you covered there too! The dual polarization products including differential reflectivity (zdr), correlation coefficient (rho_hv), and specific differential phase (kdp) are supported for the newly upgraded radars at Vance AFB, OK (KVNX), Phoenix, AZ (KIWA) and Morehead City, NC (KMHX)! Be ahead of the curve and in the first wave to learn how to utilize these exciting new products!

Full list of supported products:
Base Reflectivity
Base Velocity
Echotops
Differential Reflectivity
Correlation Coefficient
Specific Differential Phase

Awesome Features:
CONUS Radar Mosaic
GPS enabled so you can see your location relative to the storm.
Smooth Radar Reflectivity
Overlay 30 dBZ & 55 dBZ reflectivity contours

Link to the product website: http://www.weatherwary.com/apps/weatherwall/

Link direct to iTunes store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weatherwall-mobile/id446302859?ls=1&mt=8

 

[Jarrod Barnett]

$9.99 for a new app with no reviews or history is more than I would spend. It looks & sounds good but still.

IMO.... they should run a "special" to get it out there if they want to stand a chance against proven Radarscope.

Ill hold off until some reviews and stuff come up on it. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[rdale]

Not bad... There is a bug with velocity as the image turns dark. I love the split screen. Hate the lack of SN & AH interaction. Can't believe they have BV4 but not VIL or SRM. Big miss there.

Could be good, but not at all worth $10 right now.

 

[Zac Flamig]

Ah! Thats not a bug, thats a feature! The level 3 products aren't always perfectly synced up so sometimes you get one product before the other. In this case we prefer to display the latest product for the newest panel while grayscaling the older one.

We're planning to have SN & AH in a future update, those things are a bit too ambitious for a first release product. We have to start somewhere.

The lack of SRM is due to the NWS not providing the "digital radial" forms of these products, so they only have 4-bit versions not 8-bit. This will likely be remedy with something even better in a future update VIL was admittedly a minor oversight.

 

[rdale]

Ehh, I like the explainer but it's still a bug It makes the dual screen fairly useless - I'd rather see the data and get some other sort of age indication than blanking out the image. Good to hear on the other stuff.

I am DIEING for an radar app that incorporates METAR output, or even just a surface OBS app.

 

[James Langford]

What I would love to see in this app and in Radarscope is a High Res Visible Satellite option.

 

[Brandon Jenkins]

What I would love to see in this app and in Radarscope is a High Res Visible Satellite option.

Seconded. Although I can only imagine the slowdown that would occur while the image was being loaded.

 

[rdale]

What I would love to see in this app and in Radarscope is a High Res Visible Satellite option.

Not a bad suggestion, but I add links to my home screen to the RAP sectors for that.

 

[Patrick Marsh]

With proper motivation, it wouldn't be hard to grab the McIDAS area files and plot them on a website that is mobile friendly. There are several open source tools that can be utilized to do this. Something for mobile developers, including Weather Wall, to consider.

 

[Zac Flamig]

Good ideas guys, I'm interested in doing these things but trying to get the radar stuff right first!

 

[bradjones]

Good ideas guys, I'm interested in doing these things but trying to get the radar stuff right first!

I would be sold on it if there were a few more streets and roads added to it or radarscope.

 

[Zac Flamig]

Adding more streets & roads isn't planned at this point. Dealing with all that data becomes an interesting problem in a hurry.

Just an FYI to anyone who might have purchased it from here or who is thinking about it there is now a users manual at http://www.weatherwary.com/apps/weatherwall/weatherwall-mobile-manual/ that explains how to use it better and answers some basic questions.

 

[jgumm]

Zac - Best of luck to you! Looks like a cool app. Love the split-screen function.

John

 

[rdale]

I _really_ would prefer timestamps on the maps instead of the countup timer. Those are useless.

 

[Zac Flamig]

Thanks John!

rdale I'll see what I can manage. Hoping to get a quick update out in the next couple of weeks to address a few issues and add more dual-pol radars.

 

[rdale]

Great. I've had a few occasions where the reflectivity gets grayed out while the velocity stays full color... That doesn't seem physically possible. I really hope you eliminate the graying entirely and just use timestamps.

 

[Zac Flamig]

To be honest, probably not going to happen. I've chosen a different philosophy, for better or worse, from other radar apps. In other apps the two (or four) panels are either quasi-independent of each other or fully independent and they aren't the native display mode. Here however, the two panel mode is the native display mode and as such the dual-panel display is time linked so the two panels must be displaying data from the same volume scan. This is important because the relative locations of features matters. Especially with the dual-pol products.

So its different for sure, but I believe you'll get used to it and come to find it a superior experience.

 

[rdale]

So its different for sure, but I believe you'll get used to it and come to find it a superior experience.

I'll let you try to convince me So far it's not working. If I start the program up and the velocity is grayed out right away, because it's from a previous tilt, it's useless. I'd at like to at least see where the 120kt circulation was, even if it's a few minutes old, but that's not possible. I guess I don't understand what you mean by "native display mode" so far but I really can't take full advantage of a dual-screen until you add DP and SRM data.

 

[Zac Flamig]

Ah, perhaps the graying out is too intense then. It was designed with two goals in mind, to make it obvious it is older data and to still allow you to see things like circulations.

 

[rdale]

Exactly. Degray it a bit and we could be happier

 

[Zac Flamig]

The first update is now live in the App Store! Many improvements across the board!



Of course, there is always more work to be done!

 

[rdale]

Getting better!

Velocity is still butt ugly, and the legend is in meters per second? I'll grant a pass on SRM but that's needed by storm season.

 

[Zac Flamig]

Agreed, working on a better color table for velocity. The data is in meters per second and I haven't converted it, looks like everyone else is using m/s too.

 

[Zac Flamig]

WeatherWall Mobile 1.7 is now live in the app store!

New features include warnings, HCA and Az Shear!

 

[davefootball123]

Have you thought about bringing this application to the Blackberry Playbook?