Best iPad Weather apps

Magical Weather strikes the right balance between beautiful presentation and informative content. The app displays a week’s worth of temperatures in a transparent pane over a beautiful (but not overly distracting) animated background, and users can swipe to reveal an hourly forecast. Magical Weather doesn’t try to cram all available weather information into its main screen; rather, it focuses on the important information, such as highs, lows, chance of rain, wind, humidity, pressure, and UV index. Unless you really need radar, “feels like,” or other detailed information, Magical Weather is a top pick for its ability to quickly show you the weather while still offering something lovely to look at.

Intellicast HD includes an impressive amount of information and features for a free app, with only a single small ad to mar the display. The app displays a full forecast for the next 10 days, charts, graphs, an hourly forecast for the current day, sunrise/set time, moonrise/set time, moonphase, a radar, storm cell tracking, wind direction, a weather blog, and even includes a screensaver-like mode (i.e., an animated background with a clock and weather forecast that can stay on when the iPad is charging). Intellicast HD also supports multiple locations and notifications, making it an app you can’t afford to miss.

Weather Live is a universal app in every sense of the word, in that it can be used on iPhone and iPad and should appeal to users with basic and more advanced weather needs. The app opens onto a single customizable screen with basic weather information such as current temperature, feels like temperature, weekly forecast, humidity, precipitation, pressure, visibility, etc. An animated background relevant to current conditions is displayed behind the “widgets” with the temperature information. This would be enough for most users, but the app also includes a section with maps displaying clouds, radar, satellite, and rain, thus making it the one to beat.

The Weather Channel for iPad is a fantastic source of information about weather conditions in your area, including information not available in other apps (e.g., the allergen report). The app includes a detailed 10 day forecast, an hourly forecast for the current day, full maps with precipitation radars, news, videos, and it can alert you to severe weather. The Weather Channel is a solid, feature-rich weather app that would be essential but for its distracting ads and slow load time.

Peepometer is an app to be admired— even if you don’t care for its unique interface— because it successfully reimagines the presentation of weather information on the iPad. The app’s star is its retro-inspired layout that arranges weather information around porthole-inspired windows with graphical, weather-related information. Like its iPhone cousin Swackett, Peepometer illustrates the weather via outfits on stick figure-like “Peeps” and includes various easter eggs throughout the app that can be found by touching and moving various elements. The app also includes detailed weather information such as barometer, wind, compass, a map, and a week’s worth of forecast. Honestly, the only reason Peepometer isn’t essential is that its quirkiness may not appeal to everyone looking for a basic weather app, and it’s not free like its iPhone counterpart.

Weather+’s main draw is the beautiful animated backgrounds it uses to show the weather in your location. The backgrounds are so crisp they can be almost mesmerizing, but luckily the temperature and clock information is equally as sharp and well-displayed. That information includes current and feels like temperature, a five day forecast, a breakdown of the day’s weather, and precipitation, humidity, pressure, and visibility. Weather+ loses some points for its lack of detailed weather information and its overly large file size (more than 300 mbs). Still, if all you want is basic weather information in a beautiful package, you can’t go wrong with Weather+.

Seasonality Go! takes a non-standard approach to the weather app, with great results. The interface consists of “screens” that users can customize with any available weather data, by moving and resizing panes with forecasts and maps until they find the one they want. Every location can be a screen, or users can create multiple screens for a single location. Moving and resizing the panes of information is undoubtedly fun. However, the app would be improved by adding more options, and especially text options, to the panes you can use, so that users don’t have to use graphs to display crucial data such as the hourly forecast.

Although it includes a forecast, Dark Sky is too narrowly focused on rain to be an iPad user’s only weather app. The app is, however, so beautiful that it is worth a look for anyone serious about weather or storms. Dark Sky’s real-time radar shines on the larger iPad screen, and makes storms in your area (or any other current storm) look beautiful. Dark Sky includes a two day forecast that displays temperatures and possibility of rain, which is sometimes the only thing you really care about when you’re scrambling to leave the house and wonder whether you should bring an umbrella.

eWeather HD is the app for the anyone who wants to know everything about the weather in a given location. The app has a ten day forecast, information about the moon and sun, a detailed forecast, hourly weather information, maps with radar, weather alerts, and even information about earthquakes. The only issue is that it is not an app you can open, glance at, and know the weather, and it may take some time to truly grasp its intricacies.

WeatherBug for iPad boasts an impressive amount of content, especially for a free app. It features a large map with several radar options as well as current and hourly conditions, a seven day forecast, alerts, photos, and video. The app’s one mistake is that it crams all of this information onto a single screen, relying on users touching certain panels to expand the information. While this layout isn't necessarily bad, it's not an ideal choice for an app you want to be able to use quickly.

WeatherPro for iPad has lots of features and is very popular in Europe as well as the U.S. The app includes seven-day forecasts, Fahrenheit/Celsius, "feels like," sunrise/set times, radar maps, satellite, forecast graphs, and more. Unfortunately, the crowded layout does not show the information to its best advantage and detracts from the app’s utility.

Weather HD provides a very visual way to view the weather. This universal app is for those who want a “screensaver” for weather they can leave open and look at during the day. The artwork is beautiful, but unfortunately the app has yet to update for the iPad’s Retina display and therefore is less impressive than other apps in this Guide. Weather HD includes a week's worth of forecasts and a more detailed daily forecast, but is a large download.

Weatherwise is worth checking out for its features and really artistic looks. The app uses animated themes, and comes with a free Zen Tree theme. Users can watch the Zen Tree and its surroundings change with the current conditions or buy one of the themes available for in-app purchase. Weatherwise also includes the five-day forecast and hourly details.

Fahrenheit is a universal app known for its ability to display the current temperature as a badge on the app icon but, in comparison testing, its weather information was noticeably different from the other apps in this Guide. This is not to say that Fahrenheit uses inaccurate information, but rather to point out a concerning data point. Aside from this concern, the app is nicely-featured, with just enough to satisfy but not overwhelm the average user. Users outside the U.S. may prefer the sister app, Celsius (see the link below).

Accuweather Platinum feels not quite finished, like it still needs another level of refinement to compete with the top apps in the genre. The main problem is a layout that isn’t designed to take full advantage of the iPad’s intuitive gesture-based navigation. The app includes information such as 10 day and hourly forecasts, videos, and maps, but more interesting offerings, such as a “lifestyle” category give conclusions such as “moderate asthma risk” rather than concrete information.