The brand new Storm Radar app is a treasure trove of information for climate nerds

The horrible winter of 2026 is behind us in New England; now we’ve moved on to the season the place there’s a menace of rain mainly on daily basis. On condition that, the up to date Storm Radar app from The Climate Firm (homeowners of the Climate Channel app) caught my eye. There are tons of excellent climate apps on the market, and I’m the sort of nerd that likes to attempt all of them, and Storm Radar feels fairly distinctive to me.

The primary interface is, as you’d anticipate, your native radar. Tapping on any level of the map calls up an in depth forecast for that actual level, with information coming through The Climate Firm’s “gridded forecast on demand” (FOD) system. The default view is precipitation, however there are a number of different layers you possibly can add together with temperature, cloud cowl, close by lighting strikes, wind and so forth. There are additionally overlays for storm cells being tracked; you possibly can faucet on these and see issues just like the path, velocity and vary of the storm.

Along with that normal radar view, Storm Radar has simply added one thing known as high-res single web site radar. Because the title suggests, it pulls information particularly from a single climate station in a lot better element than the standard radar map; The Climate Firm says the usual view is predicated on its FOD system which makes use of quite a lot of sources, together with the corporate’s personal APIs.

The one-site radar, then again, contains reflectivity information, which measures the quantity of power returned to a radar receiver from precipitation. The Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says reflectivity is “he most regularly used product by forecasters to point the place precipitation and extreme climate is happening.” That is a degree of specificity I discover pleasant.

Naturally, there’s some AI baked into the up to date app as effectively. In my testing, it responds fairly clearly to pure language questions like “what’s the perfect time to go for a run.”There’s a extra conversational factor to the AI expertise that ought to be rolling out within the coming weeks, as effectively.

Like the usual Climate Channel app, you should use Storm Radar at no cost, however its most superior featuers require a premium subscription. $4 a month or $20 per yr unlocks all of Storm Radar’s options; you may also get a Climate Channel Premium Professional subscription for $5 a month or $30 a yr which incorporates Storm Radar in addition to eradicating advertisements and offering extra detailed information (like hourly forecasts for eight days fairly than two). That pricing is about consistent with what other weather apps are charging for premium options lately. So if the essential iPhone climate app isn’t chopping it, Storm Radar could also be price a glance. It’s solely on iOS for now, nevertheless it’ll ultimately come to Android too.