Weather Nerd is a comprehensive weather app that is appropriately named
Weather Nerd - Forecasts and Radar ($3.99) by All Star Apps is appropriately named — it is the ultimate weather app for the weather nerd in everyone. If you’ve been looking for a slick new weather app that is packed with tons of data, then look no further. Weather Nerd is similar to other apps out there like BeWeather 2 and Wthr Complete.
Even though the best way to check the weather is to just take a step outside, I can’t help but love getting all of the bits of data on my phone before I even get out of bed. I like seeing the radar of the rare storm that comes to Southern California, and it’s fun to know things like the current temperature and humidity levels. This data may not have a real effect on me when I’m outside, but I still like seeing it. I’ve gone through many weather apps on my phone, with favorites like BeWeather 2 and Carrot Weather, but I can’t help but check out new weather apps as they come out. The latest one to capture my attention is Weather Nerd, and no, it’s not just because of the nerdy icon.
The design of Weather Nerd’s interface is slick, as it features colorful backgrounds that represent the current weather conditions and the screens are packed with information (from Forecast.io) in an easy-to-read font. If you like seeing the weather data in a visual format, you’ll be pleased to see the line and bar graphs for forecasts, and there is even a live satellite radar view for those storms and other severe weather conditions. To top things off, Weather Nerd has animated icons to show wind on the line graphs, which I found to be a nice touch. Overall, when you take the colorful gradients, animations and fast transitions between views, typography, and information, Weather Nerd is a comprehensive package in a gorgeous wrapper.
On the first launch, Weather Nerd, like most other apps, will ask you to use your present location for fetching data. This is optional though, and you can manually search for different addresses or cities later on. However, there is one glaring flaw in this at the moment: it seems that you can only view one location at a time, and you can’t save multiple locations (the app only shows “Recent Locations”), so you have to search for them manually or reset the current location whenever you move. Plus, the app asks for confirmation each time you go with “Current Location.” This is rather annoying and a big flaw in my opinion, so I hope that the developer can streamline the process and implement multiple location saving and easier switching in a future update.
When you have the app pinpoint your position or you search for a city, there are several different views that you can go through for weather data: Hour, Today, Tomorrow, Week, and Calendar. You can scroll through these one-by-one by swiping horizontally on the screen, or you can tap on the specific tab you want to see. The Calendar option allows you to jump to any date in the future to view a prediction of the weather, which is useful for planning out events.
In the Today and Tomorrow views, you’ll be able to see a line graph that shows the temperature throughout the day. By default, the app will only show a timeline that consists of most of the day, but an option in the settings can turn on full days, displaying more information at once. The graph also shows a dim line that represents yesterday’s temperatures, and spinning windmill icons indicate when there is some wind. You can long-press on the graph to scroll through by the hour and get precise information. Underneath the line graph will be items like current temperature, feels like, high and low, rain percentage, wind speed, humidity, dawn, dusk, and more. If there are any severe weather alerts, you can view them by tapping on the “Nerd Out” button.
The Weekly forecast uses a bar graph format to show the high and lows of the upcoming week, as well as icons for the conditions that day. If there is going to be any rain, the percentage will be shown at the bottom. The Hour view is similar to Dark Sky, as it has a graph for the next hour that indicates any precipitation coming up. This is also where you can view the live radar, with options of what to view (storm, flood, fog, fire, and wind).
In addition to using the app itself for getting your weather for the day, Weather Nerd comes with three types of widgets to further customize your experience: Hour, Day, and Week. With these available, you’re able to get the data you need with a single swipe, which is convenient.
So far, I like Weather Nerd for the design and graphs, but there is plenty of room for improvement. I would like to see multiple saved locations and easy navigation between them all in the future, as this is a big feature that is missing in the current iteration. While the radar works, it could use more polish as well.
While Weather Nerd is a nice option to consider, I think I’ll still stick with BeWeather 2 at the moment because of how easy it is to use, and it’s still incredibly informative. But if you are the type of person to get more out of graphs and want predictions in the upcoming months, then Weather Nerd could be worth checking out. You can get Weather Nerd on the App Store as a universal app (and it is available on Apple Watch) for $3.99, which gets you a year of service. After that, you’ll have to renew through iTunes.