The Weather Channel vs Weather Underground

The overall theme of The Weather Channel app is bright with a consistent amount of Weather Channel blue. Fortunately the app also performs well. The app shares a similar design to the Google Play Store with scrolling tabs for "radar," "now," "videos," and "forecast." The scrolling tabs are very fluid and each tab is quick to load.

The Weather Channel widgets are attractive and functional. The widgets are available in 1x1, 2x2, and 4x1 sizes and even follow their own application's design language instead of following HTC like many others.

The Weather Channel app's maps provide a descent amount of radar options but the overall design is very confusing and the in app tutorial hint is useless.

The Weather Channel with its large TV presence offers an impressive amount of weather forecasts videos in the app. Although many of the videos in the app such as "Lady and the Shark!" have absolutely nothing to do with weather.

The Weather Channel application allows you to input a starting point and destination on a radar map and then predict if you will encounter any type of storms along the route. The feature needs work and doesn't always work properly but the idea is promising if improved.

Weather Underground is packed with useful information and its charts are some of the best. Access to temperature, precipitation, and wind changes all on one chart make it easy to make predictions on when the storm will hit or the best times to be outside.

One of Weather Underground's biggest differentiating factors is the option to contribute to the weather forecast. Weather Underground offers both "sky reports" and "hazard reports" as methods for crowd reporting. Sky report allows users to report on the accuracy on the current weather forecast in their current location with either a check for correct or x for incorrect. This addition can help improve the accuracy of the weather forecasts with real eyes in the skys to check their accuracy. Hazard report allows users to report flooding, power outages, road debris, high surf, slippery roads, white out, and roads unplowed to warn other users in the area.

Wunderground supports crowdfunded weather data so you can setup and read the weather from your house.

Like most other weather applications, Weather Underground includes banner advertisements but in this application they don't feel as intrusive. Weather Underground included them at the top of the screen, out of the way of accidental touches, and they are smaller than the normal banner advertisement. If you decide to remove the advertisements, it is $1.99 a year.

Weather Underground offers a very large selection of map options including: radar, temperature, precipitation, crowd reports, IR sat., wind, US fronts, visible sat., regional temp, severe weather, hurricane, active fires, fire risk, and storm tracks. Weather Underground also provides the weather station name and location if you touch each balloon of information on the map. The amount of options can be overwhelming but it is a useful tool if your interested in using it.