Dark Sky Weather 4+

There are very few apps that I actually feel improve my life and I have such high quality and thoughtfulness that I actively recommend them to people. Dark Sky is one of those. In addition to as much accuracy as you can get, it provides hourly predictions, ‘feels like’ options for things like windchill, and one particular feature which actually might have saved my health once or twice: UV Index. I had never even heard of that before but I get sunstroke allllll the time and that feature is fabulous. The hourly precipitation prediction is both attractive and insanely useful in places like New York, allowing you to time a mad dash during a lull in the storm. This app has features that no other application for tracking the weather has: it’s in my top five apps that I use and I use it every day. It works just as accurately in every country that I go to and every state that I go to, all with different types of weather challenges. I just love it. Please keep up the good work, its truly a rare product of worth and quality, like lace, or a pocket watch. Weird analogies but hopefully they get the point across: this app shows craftsmanship, not commercialism.

My favorite app for weather was suddenly not supported any longer. Opening it showed no data. So, I searched for a new one.

Dark Sky is not intuitive and the opening page shows me the temperature and if it’s rising or falling. I sort of knew that before I opened the app. It then shows what the conditions will be for the next 16 hours. It also indicates what the sky will look like and in percentages. That’s good. At the bottom of the page there are switches giving you the choice of humidity, UV index, temperature, and wind speed, but it took a few times before I realized that you must scroll down to get the switches. Then, although it doesn’t tell me, you can sweep to the left or right to get more information. To the right, it give you the high and low for the next seven days. Again, okay, but just the temperature. I want see frontal systems, lows and highs. Having been an aviator, weather is important to me. I can’t do anything about it, but I like to be prepared. That left swipe gives me a monochromatic map of the western US. With only light blue blotches. Zooming in on my home, I get somewhat vague images of what appear to be rain - no clouds that I can determine. It’s an okay app, but I find when I pay for a app that is not as good as a free one, I’m irritated. $4.00 isn’t much since there are no ads, but here in the West I want to see where my mountains and deserts are if I am planning a trip to cross the Cascade in the winter.