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Met Office vs WeatherPro (iPhone Apps)

Euan

By Euan
in The Astro Lounge

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Euan

Euan

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Now I have a new iPhone 4 (weehey), I thought I would invest in a "proper" weather app. So looking at a lot of the reviews it looked like the best one would be WeatherPro. So how does this compare to the standard Met Office app?

Features

These two apps share a lot of the same features. They both have basic forecasting, real time satellite data animations, and are configurable by location. There is an issue with the satellite animations when you compare them, the Met Office one (left) doesn't show a lot of the thin cloud visible on Weather Pro and on Sat24.com, I suspect it's just a "dumbed-down" animation of cloud cover for basic use.

Sat_both.jpg

Where WeatherPro comes into it's own in terms of features is it's extended data. It has an extra page full of graphs of Temperature, Precipitation Risk (very useful), Pressure, Sunshine Duration (solar work!), Humidity and Wind.

WP_Charts.jpg

Updates

I have a feeling, much like the Met Office website, their app seems to get a update sometime overnight, but then never seems to update until the next day. As we all know anything can happen to the weather over the course of a day.

WeatherPro updates every time you launch it and I've seen it change some of it's short term forecasting, so I have a lot more faith in what it is saying, especially it's short term forecasting of rainfall.

Accuracy

Due to the nature of the updates in WeatherPro, I think that gives it a huge advantage over the Met Office app, and over the past few weeks it certainly seems to be more accurate.

Tonight, for example the Met Office app is showing clear skies for my location, continuing on till around 3am:

Met_Sunday.jpg

WeatherPro was showing the same thing up until about lunchtime today, where it change to a small amount of cloud cover:

WP_Sunday.jpg

Which one will be right? Well, watch this space....

Price

Met Office = Free

WeatherPro = £2.39 for app, then £1.19 for 3 months Premium Data

There a quite a few things listed for the Premium Data option, but the one that made a difference for me was the hourly updates, this made it worth the extra. The full breakdown of the premium service is here: WeatherPro:WeatherPro Premium

Conclusion

So is WeatherPro worth the extra? Absolutely. There is still no harm on keeping the Met Office app just for comparison, although I find myself using WeatherPro more.

Even though both these apps show real-time satellite information, for me, sat24.com still has the most detailed image. So I keep both apps and a link to Sat24 handy on my phone.

image.ashx?country=gb&type=slide&time=&index=1&sat=ir

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Euan

Euan

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Just got this for my iPad...it's very well done and has a lot of info. Time will tell if it's accurate.

It's apps like this and VNC viewer that make me want an iPad

Come to think of it, with the amount of good astro apps now, an iPad is a pretty awesome bit of kit for an observatory

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Euan

Euan

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Which one will be right? Well, watch this space....

WeatherPro was spot on, more cloud than clear, with more cloud on the way by the look of it

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Euan

Euan

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Another score for WeatherPro last night

The Met Office was showing it as party clear all night. WeatherPro was showing clear from 10-12pm and then cloudy.

It was totally clear till about midnight then loads of cloud rolled in.

WeatherPro - 2

MetOffice - 0

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ncjunk

ncjunk

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Great information and the Sat24.com website is excellent, I managed to zoom in on where I am and you can just make out the smoke from the fires in portugal which are mucking up my seeing.

I will be using Sat24 a lot so thanks for sharing!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Pauln

Pauln

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I have been using Weather Pro for the last 18 months on iPhone 3G and then 3GS, it has been consistently more accurate than the other 2 apps that I also have which are the Met Office one and Pocket Weather. The radar animations are particularly helpful as it is fairly easy to gauge when it will rain.

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