This, in large part, is why the best radar app you can get is Dark Sky. In other words: radar images look relatively bad when you compare them to any other UI element on your iOS device. Some look prettier than others, but most of the “good” radar apps just place in a better looking map while keeping the same National Weather Service (NWS) radar data on top.Īs you can see from the screenshot above, that data looks more or less like an 8-bit video game of pixellated rainbows. Most radar apps I tested used a variation of the National Weather Service map data to show their radar maps. That public radar imagery looks something like this: What most apps won’t tell you is that, in the U.S., many of them are drawing radar data from the same source and showing you the same imagery as is publicly available on the web. With prices ranging from free to over $9.99, it can be very hard to tell which is the best. When it comes to radar apps, there certainly is no shortage in the iOS App Store. Moreover, Dark Sky has something no other weather app has: the ability to tell the future via its highly-accurate short-term localized precipitation predictions.

Dark Sky’s radar animations are smooth, fluid, and unlike any other radar app’s animations. The best radar app you can get for your iPhone is Dark Sky.

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