ACCURACY
Having accurate weather is important to many of us. Accessing that data in a useful and well designed app is also important.
The accuracy of a weather forecast depands on a lot of factors, including one’s location. For an objective analysis of which services provide the most accurage weather forecasts for your location (US), you may find this site helpful: https://forecastadvisor.com.
Here is a screen shot of the annual assessment for my location:
APP
The Weather Channel is a solid contender on an annual basis but their app has left a lot to be desired. They just released a major redesign and it is well done. In fact, it is now my default weather app. I like WU, which also tends to rank high in accuracy, but in my area WU’s reported heat index must be way off because compared to all other apps, it is running 10-20 degrees higher nearly every day. For exaple, as I type this, WU reports our local heat index as 120. The other services report it as 100-101.
My experience in Oklahoma with Weather Underground and Dark Sky has been disappointing for high temps and especially with rain predictions. Several time it was obviously raining and they predicted 0% chance rain. The apps that use these services may have great interfaces but what good is that if the data is sketchy.
I’ve found that the hyperlocal 6-minute forecasts in Dark Sky have gotten worse over the last year - telling me it was raining when it wasn’t, saying it was clear with no rain for 15 minutes while it was drizzling, etc. And the UI revamp is a step back too, to me at least.
I can’t stand the UI of the Weather Underground iOS app, so I’ve been defaulting to Weather Channel on iOS, which does exactly what I need when I check the app: tells me the weather and the upcoming chance of precipitation, and is (more) accurate when doing so. I don’t love the app (I loved the original Dark Sky UI, years ago) but it gives me the best info most clearly in NYC.
