Best Weather Apps for Sunrise Photography

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I take a lot of photos of sunrises, so the Weather is very important to me. This note will document my weather-related apps, and how I use them. I have a couple of standards that I use for choosing apps on my phone:

1. No advertistments. I am willing to pay up to $5 to get rid of ads in a *super* useful app. This pretty much removes all the TV station sponsored apps — they all seem to be more interested in being just another channel to generate advertising income for the station/network.
2. Has to be maintained. I like to see at least quarterly updates. Plus I like update notes that are actually informative instead of a contest of who can write the cutest note with no useful information in it.

Pretty simple I know. So here are the Apps I use:

• Back about 5-8 years ago, I purchased something called Accuweather Platinum for a one time fee. I am now grandfathered in and have the full Accuweather app with no ads. I use Accuweather for snow forecasts, as no other app I use seem to be able to provide those in a friendly format.

• Another app I use for radar is RadarScope Pro. This works both on my iPhone and my Mac. Its the best weather radar app I have found, its not free, but it is free from ads. You can switch between many different modes, see storm tracks, weather reports, and a lot more. Plus I can share screens to twitter directly, and it even makes 10-15 second animations. There is an annual fee for this, and it can get pricey depending on what optional features you want to unlock, but I think its worth it.

• I also use the default built in Apple weather app. Its a good basic app, but it doesn’t do snow accumlation forecasts that I can see. They recently bought Dark Sky, which has some additional info available, so I am looking forward into further integration of Dark Sky assetts into the built in weather app.

• I am a drone operator, so the last app I use to determine if its “safe” to fly my drone. It’s got weather built in. It puts everything on a single page, and I can set the thresholds of if its safe to fly based on my equipment. The app is UAV forecast. There is an annual fee for this, but its not a lot.