Rain Alarm, Receive Precipitation Warnings In Chrome

The Chrome extension Rain Alarm provides users with up to date precipitation warnings right in the browser.

The extension adds an icon to Chrome's address bar upon installation that acts as a warning indicator, as it changes automatically if new local weather warnings have been picked up by it.

The icon itself is rather small and definitely not the best notification option. Better than that icon is the built-in notifier that displays a small notification message outside the browser in the operating system whenever changes are noticed.

The notification displays information about the precipitation, e.g. snow fall or rain, as well as its reach and strength.

A click opens the rain alarm website with a Google Maps view of the selected location. Here you find precipitation data over time which is a a local weather map so to speak. You can zoom in and out of the map which seems to be completely independent of the browser extension. Users who just want to use rain alarm this way can open the website to do just that.

The website offers precipitation data of the last two hours. You can go back or forward in time to see the intensity at a specific period in time.

The options that Rain Alarm provides let you change the location that you receive weather forecasts and warnings for which you can do manually or let the extension do automatically.

There is unfortunately no option to use multiple profiles for different locations in the world. Only one location can be active at a time and if you want to switch, you need to change that location in the options to do so.

Text notifications can be turned off, and sound notifications turned on there as well if that is desired.

Other options include changing the search radius and interval, the sensitivity which defines when alarms get triggered automatically, the time format and units of measurement.

Rain Alarm is a handy extension for Chrome users who need to be in the known all the time when it comes to precipitation. It is not a full blown weather extension though, but if precipitation is what you want, then this is what you get.

Are you using weather services or weather extensions? Let me know in the comments.

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