Windy: Wind, Waves and Hurricane forecast on Android

Windy is a specialized weather application for Android that combines basic weather forecasting with highly detailed weather information.

Designed specifically for anyone who needs wind or waves weather information, it may be used to keep track of storms and severe weather conditions on top of all the basic weather data such as temperature or precipitation.

Windy is a refreshing application as it requires no extra permissions; it is free of advertisement, and does not require an account for usage.

Windy

Windy zooms in on your location when you start the application. If this is your first time starting Windy, you are asked to allow it to use location which it needs for that functionality.

The weather app displays the current temperature and forecast, information on wind strength, and a map view that highlights wind speed and direction as well.

You may use the built-in search to quickly jump to any location, or use zoom and drag motions to browse the map of earth manually instead.

The app features other view modes that you may get automatically depending on your selection. Windy displays different information when you search for a location, and when you browse around.

When you browse around, you get a play button that you may tap on to get a fast-forward forecast of the coming hours and days.

A search for a location displays yet another display; this one is filled to the brim with weather data. You get a seven day forecast, information on temperature, rain, snow and wind, and may activate additional data widgets. You may add a meteograam, an airgram, and where appropriate information on waves as well using the bottom bar.

When you search for a location, you get suggestions and may add these locations to your favorites. Useful as you may open these locations faster as you find them listed when you tap on favorites in the interface.

You may set up weather alerts for locations you are interested in. Simply tap on the favorite icon and select "alert for this spot" from the menu.

Alerts are available for the following information: wind, waves, new snow, temperature, hours, forecast model. You define ranges, e.g. temperature between 10 and 35 degrees or at least 30cm of new snow in the past three days, and will receive alerts if those conditions are met.

Note that you need to add an email address, and that alerts are sent out to that address.

There is another thing that you may do. A tap on the more button when you see the weather map displays options to change the forecast model (NEMS 4km, ECMWF 9lm, GFS 22km), the units, and what is displayed on the map (reported wind, temperature, weather forecast, airports, paragliding spots, Kits/ws spots, Webcams).

Last but not least, the settings provide you with additional options. You may switch units here for the temperature, wind, rain, waves and pressure, change the wind animation on the map, switch the time format from 24 hours to 12 hours, and enable low bandwidth mode.

A tap on advanced settings displays even more preferences. You may change the background map, show latitude and longitude on the grid, and use five sliders to customize the wind animation in more detail.

Closing Words

Windy is an excellent application of Android. While it may not be suitable for users who just want a quick weather forecast, it is ideal for anyone who needs detailed information.

If there is one thing to criticize, it is that the application has so many features and pages that you may feel a bit lost during the first days of usage.

Now You: Which weather app do you use?

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