I used to rely on The Weather Channel’s app for weather forecasts. That app used to give a pretty accurate outlook on the wind speed throughout the coming days. It made it a lot easier to plan for a hiking trip or a fly-fishing expedition, because I could check the app and plan accordingly.
But after the most recent “update,” the wind forecast has completely disappeared from the details. I thought maybe it was still in there, but that I’d have to dig a little deeper to find it. No such luck. Apparently, the one thing the app consistently got right had been removed completely.
I always made a habit of checking that app for the projected temperature and chance of precipitation, but I took those predictions with a grain of salt. They were sometimes moderately close, but quite often they were way off. I remember standing outside in 20-degree temperatures with snow falling all around me and piling up at a rate of a couple inches per hour, and at that very moment, the app was telling me the temperature should be 50 degrees and there was a zero-percent chance of precipitation. But the wind speed was exactly correct.
I was frustrated enough to go out and look for a new weather app, hoping one would have a wind forecast in the daily outlook. But after checking WeatherBug, the iPhone’s Weather app, and about six others, I still can’t find one with a wind feature.
I even called The Weather Channel to ask why they would take the wind forecast out. They explained that the bulk of their users said it wasn’t useful to them. I find that hard to believe, unless the people they asked never step outside for any reason. Who the heck doesn’t want to know what the wind’s going to be like throughout the day? Especially those of us who find ourselves out in that wind more often than not?
I’ll keep looking for a good weather app. Maybe Don Day could put together an app just for us Wyoming folks. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be grateful.
