Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone
Track Gustav on your iPhone
Just in time for the first really scary hurricane of the season, Weather Underground is providing an iPhone-specific version of their mobile site that includes a tropical storm tracker. The mobile site URL is http://i.wund.com, and the tropical storm page can be accessed directly at http://i.wund.com/tropical.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the tracker shows the location, intensity, and other statistical information about each storm. In this case we're looking at Tropical Storm Gustav, which appears to now be a Category 3 hurricane. The full-screen view seen above requires a flip to landscape mode.
If you're an iPhone user and live in any location where tropical storms can be a hazard to life and property, you might want to add this site to your Home screen.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jason Martin said 3:45PM on 8-28-2008
"In this case we're looking at Tropical Storm Gustav, which appears to now be a Category 3 hurricane."
Actually, that's the prediction. Currently, it's still a tropical storm, but the map shows the prediction of a cat 3 storm by Sunday at 8AM.
Nevertheless, I had been looking in the app store for a decent weather app, but to no avail (Weatherbug sucks!). This web app looks to fill some of that void, and the hurricane tracking feature is helpful living here in Houston. Thanks!
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tys said 3:49PM on 8-28-2008
Weather Underground is awesome! I stopped using the iPhone's weather widget when they came out with the iPhone-friendly site. I wish they would make an app that shows the same info as their site, but allows you to flip through your preset locactions, by swiping like Apple's weather app does.
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planetMitch said 3:57PM on 8-28-2008
I believe this has been around for a while, but it is good to spread the word none the less.
I too (like Jason) have been looking for a good iPhone weather app. Weatherbug stinks and the iWeather app is $15 - too much!
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tim said 4:10PM on 8-28-2008
This is a great webApp but I am seriously hoping the WU guys make a native iPhone app. Why? Because I know it would kick ass, as well as provide a great way to monitor my personal weather station.
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Greg said 4:26PM on 8-28-2008
As a South Florida resident, let me say a big thanks for this tip! The current weather apps are horrible at following fast-moving weather like tropical storms and hurricanes.
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DrWho said 4:38PM on 8-28-2008
Weather underground is an awesome iphone optimized web site for weather, I haven't even bothered to load other weather programs because I like it so much. It's very quick to load, even over Edge and even loading the animated weather radar.
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brett Ellis said 4:48PM on 8-28-2008
How things have changed in just a few years, or maybe not. My thoughts are with you NOLA, it was about this time of year for Katrina. I was evacuated by helicopter almost a week after Katrina. I could only bring a small backpack of items, of which I crammed in my old ibook and two hard drives (double ziplocked) that I pulled from other machines.
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~bc said 9:45PM on 8-28-2008
Hardly "just in time" for hurricane season, this site has been out since just after the initial iPhone 1.0 release.
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unclemac said 6:31PM on 8-28-2008
Cool but yeah I agree that a native iPhone app by these guys would be frekin' awesome! This is more than just handy as I live in Baton Rouge, LA and have friends in the US Virgin Islands and in the Philippines and this covers both in one quick look! Love it! I'd pay for a Weather Underground iPhone App BTW. :D
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Arthur said 7:31PM on 8-28-2008
There is a native iPhone app called "Who is Hot?" that is available for free at the app store
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284699894&mt=8
The genesis of the app was to take as much of the data we could from the iPhone to help you to navigate to the website, which we are proud of.
It is easier to update features on a web site than on app which needs to through QA. That is great for making sure that your apps are healthy on a phone, but not so great if you wanted to put up a hurricane tracker quickly.
The most obvious iPhone feature we added is core location to get the forecast for your current position.
But we went a little further than that...
The app uses your contacts' address to list their conditions and is clever enough to use the first 6 digits of a phone number (but not the whole for privacy reasons) to determine their location and their conditions.
And with both distance and conditions we could then let you sort based upon how close the address was to your current position (useful if you are traveling) or temperature (useful if you want to feel better about your friends who are really cold).
Yes, it is slightly goofy, but it is a good way to group a bunch of places you want to look at: your own collection of weather pages. If you don't want to use all of your contacts you can pick one of your contact groups to use instead.
We are huge Apple fans and hope to roll out more cool stuff soon.
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TRustama@localnet.com said 8:40PM on 8-28-2008
Hey TUAW! Check your facts! That is a projection shown on that page! G is still south of Cuba! 2-3 days to the GOM! Lets not get everyone all wound up too soon.
If you are new to Wunderground.com?... tell me.... what is it like living under that rock???? You want weather info?...GO THERE!
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thelonious said 2:09AM on 8-29-2008
True. However, the Tropical and Severe Weather sections, as well as Jeff Masters' blog were just added to it this week. It's been growing in content a lot since the initial release.
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Galley said 9:25AM on 8-29-2008
Weather Underground has the best local radars.
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