Weather.com Review

Living in the Northwest section of the country, we have constantly changing weather coming in off the ocean, or down through Canada.  As a result, you never know what you are going to be in for during the Fall, Winter, and Spring seasons.  For that reason, I always want to know what the outlook for the weather is going to be, and Weather.com was one of the places that I had relied on for information.  Recently though, the site has taken a big step back with constant pop-up advertisements getting in the way of use, and a really slow loading site that grates on the nerves of this particular user. 

With Weather.com, you can search out what the predictions are for your area by just typing in your zip code or major city.  You are then presented with the choices on what you want to view.  They include yesterdays weather, todays, tomorrows, an hour-by-hour, the weekend, a 10-day, or even a month worth of weather predictions.  If you really want to go in-depth, they also provide a radar map feature, which allows you to see a radar view of the clouds heading in your direction.  This is normally a good predictor on whether you are about to get hit with a storm, and is much more reliable than some of their forecasts that aren't updated frequently.  For instance, the hour-by-hour could show that it is snowing right now (it actually does), but there isn't a flake in the sky here right now.  By not updating that daily or hourly, it takes away some of its value.

The other thing that these forecasts provide, beyond whether it will just be sunny or raining, are the temperature, what the temperature feels like (adjusted to wind-chill), the chance of precipitation, the dew point, humidity level, and how fast the win is blowing.  Quite a lot of information can be found there, as well as resources that can give you safe driving tips, videos of bad weather around the country,  and many other helpful tools that use can use to plan a trip based on weather and driving conditions.  The site really has a lot to offer, and could be so helpful to the end user if it weren't for the lag time and the advertisements that often overpower the user.  I think that they have the great makings of a site here, and I also understand the need to make an advertising profit, but it should not come at the expense of their users (customers).

I do think that Weather.com is a great site to find information about the weather and conditions, and though I do have some things I do not like about the site, I would still recommend it as a good place to find out that weekend forecast.