Buying guide
Best free weather apps
After a decade of watching storm chasers argue about apps on X, here is an honest 2026 breakdown of what works best for what — from casual users to serious chasers.
For everyday use
MyRadar (free)
Cleanest general-purpose radar app. Fast, animated loop, hurricane tracks, NWS alerts. No frills but no clutter.
Apple/Google Weather (free, built in)
For basic "will it rain today?" both are excellent now. Neither shows radar loops as well as MyRadar.
Windy (free)
Gorgeous vector-based visualization of wind, temperature, waves, air quality. Multiple model layers. Not a warning app.
Weather Underground (free)
Personal weather station network integration. Best hyperlocal accuracy.
For storm chasers
RadarScope ($10)
The de facto standard. Level 3 radar data, hail size algorithms, tornado debris signatures. If you chase, you have this.
RadarOmega (free tier, $30/yr pro)
RadarScope competitor. Excellent for radar overlay and mesoanalysis on the phone.
PYKL3 (free)
Android-only, packed with mesoanalysis. Not the prettiest UI but very functional.
SpotterNetwork (free)
See where other chasers are in real time. Not a radar app but every serious chaser has it.
For warnings
- Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) — automatic on any phone. Loud tone for tornado warnings in your area.
- FEMA app — customizable location alerts.
- NOAA Weather Radio Live — streams NWS voice broadcasts.
- Your local NWS office X account — often the fastest for confirmed reports.
For forecasting nerds
Pivotal Weather (free)
Model output plotting site. GFS, NAM, HRRR, ECMWF all in one place. Not an app but works great on phone browsers.
Tropical Tidbits (free)
Best model viewer for hurricanes. Excellent ensemble spread plots.
Weather Prediction Center (free)
Direct from NWS. Not pretty but authoritative.
Skip these
- The Weather Channel app — ads, tracking, upsells. Their science is fine but the experience is bad.
- AccuWeather app — long-range forecasts they cannot possibly justify. Free tier is aggressive with ads.
- Any app that markets itself with "AI weather" — most of them just wrap OpenAI on top of an existing forecast API.