There are many weather apps and these apps are growing with improved information. Few of these apps also offer weather widgets. So, you can quickly get weather information directly from the home screen. We have put together our list of these top 8 note taking apps for the iPad and iPhone to make your life easier.

 

Carrot
Snarky, accurate weather

Carrot isn’t just the name of this weather app, it’s the name of the snarky and mildly vindictive AI that lives within. Each time you spin up the app, Carrot will welcome you with some degree of sass that is often tied to the current weather or pop culture. Even real-world events.

But I don’t love this app just because of the bad-mouthing robot, it also happens to be an extremely useful app. It pulls its weather data from multiple sources — your choice — and lets you customize almost everything about it. Adjust the layout of the Home Screen, prioritize metrics you care about and adjust your notifications and alerts.

The app has all the typical weather information you’d expect such as radar maps, predicted forecasts, and iOS Home Screen widgets. On Apple Watch, you can customize the look as well. You can choose exactly the complications too.

There simply isn’t any other app that has as many customization options as Carrot does. That combined with the Carrot’s charming personality and lovely graphics makes this one of the most popular weather apps around.

Dark Sky
Good enough for Apple to buy

I’ve been using Dark Sky for ages, particularly for the hyper-local real-time weather alerts. As I’d walk to class, Dark Sky would send me a notification that rain was about to begin within 15 minutes. Just enough to either get to a building or hop on a bus. It saved me plenty of times as I strolled the campus.

The app has seen a few redesigns over the years and while it offered forecasts and plenty of weather data, the alerts were its bread and butter. It’s this reason that Apple acquired the app not too long ago. Apple has started to integrate features of Dark Sky into the stock weather app, such as rain alerts, but it is still a far cry from the standalone Dark Sky app.

Fortunately, Apple has kept Dark Sky around on the App Store for those who prefer to continue using it.

The app has a clean interface on both iPhone and iPad, a seven-day forecast, and an hourly forecast. You can see use the time machine to peep the weather any day in the past as well as into the future, though I can’t exactly vouch for how accurate those are…

If you want rain alerts and a compelling app to go with, Dark Sky is the master of hyper-local weather.

Weather Underground
It’s all about the data

This is another great app that focuses on hyper-local forecasts. Weather Underground pulls data from over a quarter of a million personal weather stations to get your weather very accurate to your location, not just rain. This is opposed to large weather stations used by other apps that are centrally located and may be showing the weather ten miles away or more.

All are plotted on graphs and maps so you can visualize the weather around you. It can also alert you to severe weather in your area. If a tornado is nearby, you’ll get an alert from Weather Underground telling you as much.

It has a ten-day forecast so you can see a bit more info than the usual seven-day window others have. Other neat features I don’t see often include sunrise/sunset times, moonrise/ moonset times, and can track things like a local flu outbreak.

Even if you don’t use the Weather Underground app, you may be using its data. Several apps, including Carrot, offer an option to pull data from Weather Underground. So why use another app when you can go straight to the source?

Netatmo
Your personal weather forecast

Speaking of personal weather stations, I love my Netatmo one. Netatmo makes a great home weather station with both indoor and outdoor components. Indoors it monitors your air quality, temperature, noise level, and humidity while outdoors it can measure even more. You can pick up additional modules to measure things like the amount of rain you’ve gotten in your yard or how fast the wind gusts blow by.

This all goes to the Netatmo app which is a joy to use. You have your own metrics that it pulls in and combines with forecasting data. On the Home Screen, I can see my outdoor weather station with its temperature, pressure, and “feels like” temp. Things like pressure and temperature have a trend arrow to let you know which way they’re moving.

All of these metrics are shown numerically but as you rotate your phone, Netatmo intelligently displays them as a graph instead. You can pinch in and out to change the timeline or use the drop-down in the corner to change which graph you’re looking at. It all feels very polished, clean, and easy to use.

Netatmo has multiple widgets for your iOS Home Screen that can show various information from your indoor or outdoor modules or forecasts. There are custom notifications too so you can get alerts based on any criteria you see fit. Sure, you need hardware to take full advantage of the Netatmo app, but if you have it, it’s the most accurate weather around.

RadarScope
Visualize the weather

Unlike the other weather apps that focus on forecasts or the temperature outside, RadarScore corners the niche market on the radar. It’s a professional-level app that allows you to view NEXRAD Level 3 radar data along with multiple other severe weather warnings from the National Weather Service.

Display maps of tornados, thunderstorms, flash floods, snow squalls, and more to track their progression. Interact with the radar with pinch to zoom and move around by dragging. There are hundreds of different radars to view across multiple countries, even beyond the U.S.

There’s plenty of great integration here with iOS as well. RadarScore has an iMessage app full of radar-specific stickers that you can share with your other weather nerd friends. The app is a universal purchase and is available not only on your iPhone, but on your iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch as well.

Pixel Weather
Retro weather for your iPhone

Isn’t pixel art charming? There’s just something about it that feels charming, retro, and intricate. It’s a skill on its own to create pixel art and Pixel Weather uses those graphics to fill out an entire app.

Pixel Weather has data for temperature, humidity, the chance of precipitation, wind direction, wind speed, UV indices, and air pressure that can be displayed in the app. There are both 12 and 24-hour forecasts alongside a full 10-day forecast. That’s all great, but why I downloaded it was because of the artwork.

The whole app has been pixel-fied, including the battery icon and the clock up in the menu bar. There are tons of cute icons throughout the app that represent the current forecast, opening menus, and even Bluetooth.

This design schema is carried through to the widgets too. There are a ton of widgets with various background colors, forecasts, and sizes. These bring that style directly to your Home Screen. For Apple Watch users, there’s a dedicated app designed for the small display.

If you’re nostalgic, or perhaps just a bit nerdy, then Pixel Weather is worth checking out.

MyRadar
Live weather forecasts

If you need one more option for forecasts and radar, check out MyRadar. This app, boasting more than 50 million downloads, has plenty of high-definition radars with multiple layers to toggle. Compared to RadarScope, it has a much-improved user interface. There are plenty of modern lineicons and vibrant colors to make the app inviting to use.

Like others, it is able to provide hyper-local weather and rain alerts though it claims to be more accurate than any others. On Apple Watch, the black background causes the iconography and text to pop and look right at home on your wrist.

Recently, MyRadar has introduced daily video forecasts. There are guest hosts such as Neil deGrasse Tyson among others that stop by to talk about the weather. While available on iPhone and iPad, I kind of wish it was available on Apple TV too.

MyRadar prides itself on providing useful and easy-to-access information for everyday users but also appealing to professionals with multiple map types and advanced animations. Pilots can even take advantage of it with aviation data such as Sigmets and Airmets.

Ambient
Weather, but in words

This simple app is brilliant. I love it so much. Rather than a bunch of numbers, charts, or maps, Ambient gives you the weather in plain text. That’s it.

Open the app and you’re presented with a stark interfaced. A clean white — or black — background with a single sentence in the center. It doesn’t try to give you a number, but rather something useful. “Columbus is rainy today so bring an umbrella” is all you need to know.

This information is perfect for widgets. Add small, medium, or large widgets to your Home Screen and they’ll update periodically with the current weather conditions for whichever locations you’ve added. What I love is that Ambient doesn’t try to clutter the larger widgets, it still keeps them perfectly stark and minimalist.

The sentences are a sans-serif font, perfect for the modern look. If the background is black, the text will be white and the reverse is true as well. The weather portion though can be colored. If the weather is nice, then the word “nice” will be in green. If it is misty out, then the word “misty” will be in a light grey. It’s a subtle touch but shows how much thought went into the design.

I’m a minimalist at heart. I love open spaces, clean design, and ditching all the clutter. It’s no surprise I was drawn to this app.

But enough about other people's apps.

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