Windows 10 comes with some good apps and they have steadily improved since they were originally launched. The Weather app is very nice, but is it the best? Here are some good alternatives..
The Windows Weather app is excellent and it is hard to beat, but there are others you should consider. Trying alternative weather apps in the Microsoft Store app in Windows 10 was disappointing. Almost all of them did not work. They appeared to be abandoned apps that had not been updated in years and their sources of weather information had stopped.
Foreca Weather
Foreca Weather was one of the few apps that worked and I must have tried more than half a dozen. It is a bit plainer and simpler than the Microsoft Weather app, but it has some good points.
It will automatically detect your current location or you can search for any location worldwide. It then shows the current weather and a brief overview of the next three days - just the high and low figures, plus a weather symbol indicating sun, cloud, rain and so on.
Scroll to the right and there is five-day forecast shown as a chart. This is the best feature and it shows the changing temperature as a red line, bars show the amount of rainfall, and symbols at the top show sun, cloud and rain. There are four data points for each day and this is an excellent overview of the weather for the days ahead.
Scroll some more or spin the mouse wheel and there is a 10-day weather forecast. There isn’t the details of the five-day forecast and you just get the high and low temperature and a weather symbol. That’s OK, forecasting gets very fuzzy over a few days ahead. One more thing is a weather map that shows rain or cloudiness.
This is a useful app and it is worth trying as it is free. Search for it in the Microsoft Store app in Windows 10.
Oplao Weather
Instead of a weather app on the Windows desktop, how about adding one to your web browser? Oplao Weather is a free extension for Chrome and Edge (now that it is Chrome-based). Install the extension, click the puzzle piece in the Chrome toolbar and pin the Oplao Weather icon.
Click it and it shows the current location. You can enter more locations by searching for major cities around the world and build a list. Switch to the Weather tab and there is a nice display of weather information.
It shows the weather now at the top and there are four panels showing a forecast for morning, midday, evening and night. The order depends on when you look and it always shows what is coming up next. A strip along the bottom sows a mini forecast for the next three days.
This is a nicely designed weather forecast that shows useful information in the browser.
World Weather Online
World Weather Online is a Chrome extension that also works in Edge browser too. It shows your current location and you can add several other locations by searching for cities around the world. You can quickly switch from one location to another with the arrows either side of the title at the top.
It is the least detailed of the weather forecasts, but it does have one very useful function. It can show historic weather. For example, if you want to know what the weather will be like in New York next August, you could look at what it was like last August. It shows the weather every three hours throughout the day for whatever date you pick.
Be the first to comment