Get forecasts and alerts on your desktop with Weather Watcher Live
I am sure I am not alone in the fascination I have with watching the weather. While storms can be dangerous and damaging I still must confess that I love watching a good one.
I live in an area that gets frequent late-day thunderstorms in summer along with the occasional tropical storm in late  summer and fall. During these severe weather events I can frequently be found sitting on my porch watching all of the action. Honestly, I probably should have been a storm chaser.
That is why I love weather apps -- both in my browser, on my phone and even on my desktop. There is no shortage of options for all of those solutions.
However, recently I have been testing a desktop app, Weather Watcher Live, that I have to say I like very much. There is a drawback, but there are also a number of positives, so let's look at both.
On the positive
The app pulls data from a number of sources, as opposed to just one as most dedicated apps do. It also has a number of different views, like Refresh, Now, Hourly, Daily, Monthly, Local, Alerts, Maps and Settings. In addition, it shows advisories for severe weather in a red bar just beneath the tabs, as well put popping up a box in your system tray.
On the negative
Price. Plain and simple. The app comes with a 30-day free trial, no credit card required to sign up. However, it will stop working after those thirty days unless your subscribe. Plans begin at $19 per year -- there are longer plans available, but alas, there is no discount for taking one of them.
Conclusion
There are free alternatives, although they pack a few less features and do not collate date from multiples sources. However, if you are feeling thrifty then both the Weather Channel app and Weather Bug will work just fine for you and provide much of the same functionality. In the end, it comes down to what you want what you are willing to spend to get it. For me, the jury is still out, but I will likely go back to the Weather Channel app when my trial is up. But, this tempting.
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With all the free weather apps and screensavers out there, and the ability to just bookmark a sites like the Weather Channel or Accuweather and have the forecast in seconds, I’m surprised that anyone would bother charging for this, or that the reviewer would select payware to write about.
Joe,
I used to be a user of Weather Watcher back when it was free. But unfortunately the weather source it used (I can’t remember which one it was) is no longer valid, so the program became useless and is obviously no longer updated :(
Thanks for the tip about weatherspark.com. It looks very nice and I didn’t know about it.
Alan,
My current weather information setup is a bookmark that allows me to quickly open a tab to The Weather Channel, but with a little trick worth mentioning. I’m mostly interested in the hour-by-hour forecast for the next day or so, but unfortunately TWC only display a meager SIX hours on their hourly forecast on the first page. You can see it for example at: http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/Villa+La+Angostura+ARNN8407:1:AR
But, and here comes the “trick”, you can force TWC to display the following 18 hours in the same page just by adding the following at the end of the URL: “?pagenum=2&nextbeginIndex=0”, without the quotes.
So, in my previous example, the resulting URL would be: http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/Villa+La+Angostura+ARNN8407:1:AR?pagenum=2&nextbeginIndex=0
Voilá! Magic! :)
Btw, I chose Villa La Angostura for my example because it’s one of my favorite places in the world. Google some images of it and you’ll see why ;)
You can also get the last free version of Weather Watcher here:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Weather-Home/Weather-Watcher.shtml
WW Live was a rewrite of Weather Watcher in .NET. I used it for years with just a few very minor bugs, but now I’ve started just keeping a tab open to weatherspark.com
Try this one!
Skwire Empire. sWeather.
http://skwire.dcmembers.com/fp/?page=sweather
Great review, but know this 1.. +Its good also in its predictions !
But this is also interesting.. using it and it’s funny
http://yowindow.com/?locale=en_US
How do Free and Unlimited compare?
Free
Weather forecast
3 days only
Unlimited
6 – 9 days