Weather.com has a consumer rating of 1.49 stars from 235 reviews indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Consumers complaining about Weather.com most frequently mention high speed, many ads and day forecast problems. Weather.com ranks 24th among Weather sites.
With more of us getting vaccines, soon it will be time to go back outside and safely explore and enjoy the world again. But when Mother Nature is in a bad mood (which is more likely than ever these days thanks to climate change), it helps to keep an eye on what’s happening in the sky. One of the most important tools for that is a mobile weather app. A good weather app helps you decide if you’ll need to bring an umbrella to work, or prepare for more serious conditions. With wild weather across the country, particularly hurricanes threatening coastal states, it’s a good idea to check the forecast or radar for upcoming conditions. A weather app lets you do that wherever you are, whenever you like.
When testing weather apps, we spent most of our time evaluating the effectiveness of their design. An ideal weather app is visually pleasing and easy to use. If you have to dig through several screens to find out when it’s going to rain, the app is off to a bad start.
What we didn’t look for is whether or not the predicted weather came to pass. Our reasons are twofold: First, most weather apps get the bulk of their data from the National Weather Service. Some also pull their predictions from AccuWeather, Dark Sky, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Weather Channel and a few other companies have their own predictive models, but many apps are just shells into which data flows.
Second, and more importantly, to really determine the accuracy of the service’s model, we’d have to perform exhaustive tests across the globe. We’re simply not set up to tackle that kind of challenge. As it stands, we’ll assume that if a company has invested the time and effort to create its own predictive models for something as complex as weather, then it probably knows more about meteorology than we do.
For what it’s worth, the apps were all quite accurate during testing. Despite earlier conspiracies, the rollout of the 5G wireless network shouldn’t ruin these weather forecasts. Besides, right now you should be staying inside anyway to help curb the ongoing pandemic, even on the nicest of days. If you’re really concerned about accuracy, consider getting a weather station of your own. Though weather stations are more about recording your local data than about getting forecasts, setting up and maintaining a weather station is a fun science project—just maybe not right before a hurricane hits.
At first, we did not fully appreciate the sheer number of weather apps available for Android and iOS devices. In the end, we picked those we thought offered something unique, along with the most popular apps. The vast majority of these apps are free, so try them out until you find the sunniest one for you.
Weather Channel Overview
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- Website:www.weather.com
- Headquarters:Atlanta, GA
- Size:201 to 500 Employees
- Founded:1981
- Type:Company – Private
- Industry:TV Broadcasting & Cable Networks
- Revenue:$50 to $100 million (USD)
Competitors: UNKNOWNViewers tune into this channel when it gets nasty outside. The Weather Channel operates a 24-hour cable network that reaches about 100 million US homes with a mix of regional and local weather forecasts, storm alerts, and long-range forecasts, as well as extended coverage of damaging storms and floods. The Weather Channel also operates weather.com, which boasts an audience of more than 40 million users per month, and provides syndicated weather information to more than 700 radio stations. The company is controlled by financial entity TWCC Holding Corp., a consortium made up of NBCUniversal (NBCU) and private equity firms Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group. It operates as a separate business managed by NBCU.
Weather apps provide us with one of the most basic but essential tasks, giving us a forecast to plan out our days and weeks. Depending on which weather app you choose to download, you may also get additional information like monthly forecasts, humidity levels and precipitation totals.
However, any third-party weather app — as in, those that don’t come built-in to your phone — poses a risk, since they operate using location data, and sometimes ask for permissions they don’t actually need. A number of weather apps, including those from The Weather Channel, AccuWeather and WeatherBug, have come under fire or faced lawsuits for selling location data to advertisers.
The built-in Weather app on your iPhone (which uses data from The Weather Channel) or Google Weather app on your Android may not be perfect, but if you’re already in those device ecosystems, they have your current location information anyway. If you want to be even safer, check the weather manually in your internet browser or another device.
There are hundreds of weather apps in the App Store and Play Store, so we haven’t tried them all. But these are the ones we liked best, along with their privacy policy information. All are available on Android and iOS.
The weather data that we use to produce our weather forecast charts come from the most trusted and reliable sources available. These sources include the US National Weather Service (NWS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the Marine Meteorology Division of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).
Our worldwide Surface Wind (10m above sea level), Surface Pressure, Visibility, Cloud Cover and Precipitation forecast charts are derived from the 0.25 degree GFS (Global Forecast System) model, one of the operational forecast models run at NCEP. The GFS model is run four times daily, with forecast output to 180 hours (7.5 days).
For North America, we create higher-resolution Surface Wind (10m above sea level) charts using data from the 12km (~0.12 degree) NAM (North American Mesoscale) model. This model, an NCEP implementation of the WRF-NMM model, is run 4 times a day, with forecast output to 84 hours (3.5 days).
We run higher-resolution Surface Wind (10m above sea level) charts for parts of Western Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, using data from the 18km (~0.2 degree) COAMPS (Coupled Ocean / Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System) model. Developed by the NRL. This model is run twice a day, with forecast output to 96 hours (4 days).
Our Wave Height & Direction forecast charts are derived from the WW3 (WaveWatch III) model, the third generation of the wave model developed at NOAA/NCEP. The WW3 model is also run four times daily, with forecast output to 180 hours (7.5 days).
Note: The Great Lakes WW3 wave model only provides forecast output to 84 hours (3.5 days)
The Wave Height & Direction forecast charts for the Black Sea are derived from the WW3 wave model developed and run by the NRL. This model is run twice a day, with forecast output to 96 hours (4 days).
The Gulf Stream Velocity and Direction charts (as well as these regions’ Sea Surface Temperature charts) use data from the Real-Time Ocean Forecast System (RTOFS), developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The RTOFS model is run once a day, with forecast output to 144 hours (6 days).
We create the Sea Surface Temperature analysis charts using AVHRR + AMSR data from NASA’s Earth Observing Satellite System, as well as ship and buoy SST observations. This data is produced daily, with output analysis valid the previous day.
What is The Weather Channel?
The Weather Channel gives you weather updates with full screen maps, forecasts, alerts for severe weather, and more. Just enter your location. Or, if you’re using The Weather Channel on a mobile device, it’ll automatically detect your location for you.
• Learn what the forecast is, whether hourly, daily, weekly, weekend or 15-day.
• Cognitive Home Screen: Changes based on your current location, weather, and time of day, so you get your current conditions plus the weather info you need most.
• Hurricane Central: Monitor tropical storms and hurricanes and get safety and preparedness tips. When a tropical storm or hurricane forms, track it and stay safe with Hurricane Central.
• Detailed Current Conditions: Get “feels like” temperature, humidity, wind speed, and more.
• Weather Maps: Fast-loading radar maps show past and future doppler radar.
• Severe Weather Alerts: Stay safe with real-time National Weather Service notifications of severe weather including severe weather warnings about lightning, hail, flooding and severe storms.
THE WEATHER CHANNEL is one of the main benefactors of www.consumersdigestweekly.com and www.consumerproductsdaily.com scam websites. Whomever owns these (2) 1 page websites (it is listed as International Media Licensing) is paying The Weather Channel www.weather.com tremendous amounts of money to advertise on the www.weather.com home page under the sponsored link heading.
The aforementioned web pages are the scams themselves and the issue is: why would THE WEATHER CHANNEL knowingly allow these ads on the www.weather.com home page? It looks like monetary gain is more important than operating an ethical website. What other areas of THE WEATHER CHANNEL and www.weather.com do we need to be aware of? Who else are they taking money from to dupe the public?
There is no return for International Media Licensing when doing a web search for a company with this name. Which of course means there is no way to contact anyone of either of the 1 page websites.
Other www.weather.com advertisers should be aware they are advertising alongside known scam pages. Please don’t visit or use www.weather.com
