Storm Radar: Weather Tracker Reviews

by Techick74

I guess because I chose not to upgrade to premium I don’t get to see the weather at all. The last couple of times I’ve gone to StormRadar all I get are dashes where information should be. My saved locations were gone so I entered them again to see if that would help, no. I refuse to put an app (that I can get the same information else where for free)on the payroll. I’m only willing to make a one time payment.

Update.....
The makers of StormRadar contacted me after my first review assuring me that I would still receive basic weather information to keep me safe in the case of hazardous weather. I just went through a hurricane here in NC no thanks to StormRadar. The entire time leading up to the storm all I got was a picture of the continents, I couldn't even zoom in on my location to see anything. I got the notification for a warning but because I couldn't open my location I didn’t know how to get to the warning. I probably wouldn't say anything now but this morning I got another notification for a weather warning. Why is it I can now get all the detail I could ever want about a storm that has already passed.

by HelenaHanbaskit

UPDATE: Just paid for a one month sub so I can see lightning and the lightning tracker won’t toggle on. Utter joke. Want a refund.

I miss the 3 day thunderstorm/spc outlook display! The earthquake monitor (which the new app has but it’s hard as the dickens to see)! I miss the lightning monitor (again, StormRadar has one but it’s not nearly as reliable). I miss being able to search a location by typing it in. Hunting it down and tapping the screen is a pain when I’m not 100% familiar with the area I might be looking for radar info in. I can’t tap my saved locations anymore and I miss that, too! My husband works in a different town, now when he asks is it going to rain, I have to hunt him down rather than tapping the location at the top of the screen. Overall, the radar is gorgeous...it’s the sheer loss of functionality that stinks. I miss the current conditions at the bottom of the screen; the tap-to-expand setup now is frustrating and very confusing to read. Sometimes it opens...sometimes it causes the location pointer to relocate, causing me to again have to find where I wanted to be looking in the first place. You have a great radar, at this point. That’s about it. One star.

by Catcala

I’ve been a user of StormRadar for years, mostly in summer to watch for tornadoes and hail. Then they downgraded it and make you pay for it. I paid for the summer at least this year but I’m about to cancel it. I mostly use the storm track details but it doesn’t work. It worked last year and every year before that but now I pay to have it not work. The storm track details won’t scroll. I can’t even get to the hail info. I’ve emailed twice for help but receive NOTHING. They must send them straight to the trash instead of replying. And the search for help topics, another big joke. You can find Covid info there but nothing about how to fix a problem with StormRadar . So not worth it.
EDIT: well I’m happy most people have an app that works for them. Me, nothing works. Still paying for it but this is now the 4th time I have written and said what the problems are and I get no reply whatsoever. No help nothing. It worked beautifully when it was free. As soon as I started paying-nothing works. That tells me one thing. All they care about is the money and could care less about any problems.

by Pmotz

Well the Weather Channel has now ruined a perfectly good app. Since they “remodeled” the Storm app into the new “Storm Radar” app it’s just not very good anymore. The layout is odd and not very intuitive, plus they changed one of the best things on Storm, the wind speed graphics. It was real easy to see the wind movement with many wind speed arrows, but now it is the occasional arrow and no movement, just a direction. No where near as useful. The radar is ok, but when you zoom in sometimes the rain/snow that was there disappears! Something is wrong there. The current weather info seems to be lacking a measure of precipitation in the last 24 hours, something that is pretty basic for weather information. After using this for several months (I would switch to another app, but they are all bad!), I’ve found it pretty flakey. Quite often StormRadar just quits for no reason. Other times I try to move the map area and it takes 10-15 seconds for it to respond. I also do not like the radar to go into animation mode when I open StormRadar and have configured it to not do that ... but it still does occasionally. This is all pretty sad given all the time they have had to work on this. Update, now they are pushing the “Pro” version and have some icons on the left side of the screen that are only active in the “Pro” version. Problem is they block the view on the iPhone, but you can’t get rid of them. Another annoying money grab ....

by Sabor Místico

While the free version of StormRadar once offered actual customizable features, like a choice of how many miles away the lightning tracker would scan, for example (i.e.: 1 mile, 3 miles or 5 miles...), those choices have now been taken away and replaced with standardized generic settings for all features. So now the lightning tracker is set at a 5 mile radius, which I have found not to be particularly significant or useful.

The thing is, the previous Storm app that this replaced (not to mention the defunct Intellicast) was practical, usable and detailed, and a much better product overall. The free version of StormRadar once actually gave you something you could use, but it is now little more than a glorified electronic map. The removal of any real ability to customize the features of this replacement version is clearly designed to motivate users to purchase the premium version. However, after this free app that once provided useful features was gutted and now offers next to nothing, why would I bother?

This is just another useless gimmick now...with a whole lot of fake positive reviews propping up its rating, to boot.

by Inter-Space Freight

It got better by only a little. Storm Radar is still an inferior app to what it replaced. Several updates to fix bugs and still hasn’t fixed most. App opens up showing Africa and the Eastern Atlantic. Must close StormRadar and then reopen it to connect back with my location and current radar. I use it, but still wish for something better. Exploring other apps. All the comments below still apply.
_________________________
The Storm Radar app is supposedly the replacement for the Storm app, which gave a notice of being discontinued May 24. I eventually found a very difficult to read graph of hourly temps and daily forecast. OK maybe for a LARGE display, but too tough to read on typical smartphone screens. I can save favorites of destinations I go for work but then constantly get unwanted weather notices for all of them. Haven’t found out how to turn that off while keeping my home location on. This is still NOT an improvement over the former app. It is a major step backwards. It is not intuitive. It is not easy to use or to read. I have to search for information where the former app gave great info all on one screen. Disappointed in the extreme. I’ve started using local news weather reports rather than turn this thing on. Hanging in there to SEE / HOPE it improves. Giving it the Summer months. If no better, it’s deleted.

by Dgjuytfv

StormRadar is so disappointing, there’s probably too many things to list. First of all, it was way better when it was just Weather Underground. Once they forced you to move over from “Storm“, everything went downhill from there. First, I had paid for an ad free experience on Weather Underground (WU), and when they forced you to move over to Storm, they didn’t credit you for the ad free experience you had paid for on the original app. I have contacted them repeatedly, and have gotten no response whatsoever. Apparently they just don’t care about taking your money and then not providing the service you had paid for. Secondly, the underlying map in Storm isn’t nearly as good as the one they used to use when it was WU. Currently, you are unable to edit saved locations or recents. The delete button does not function. The satellite layer on the map doesn’t work. I’d say that their customer service sucked, but you would actually have to have made contact with someone to make that assessment. They can’t even be bothered to reach out to you when you have a problem and request some help. The list goes on and on. How do you take a product that was really good (WU), and then make it significantly worse, while effectively stealing people’s money for a service they had prepaid for. Truly mystifying. Don’t waste your time with StormRadar.

by Cmeiman2019

When I first got StormRadar it was easily one of the best one StormRadar Store. Great radar, easy to use tools, alerts that were on the mark. I’m in landscaping and snow removal so it was perfect, but that was 5 years ago. Since then through several updates and “improvements” the developers have gotten sloppy and greedy. On my iPhone 10 with the most updated free version StormRadar constantly shuts down, won’t open several “free” and important features like special weather statements.
A few years ago they changed StormRadar so you could click on any part of the map and get the weather, but it’s very seldom I need the weather anywhere but where I’m at, and if I do need the weather in Canada I could easily search it. The only thing this map does it make me mad when I accidentally click it instead of the small carrot to minimize the forecast screen and get thrown into Toronto!
Then there is the greedy part, only a few short months ago you could do anything on StormRadar. There were some features to upgrade but they were very specialized or to go without adds. Now I can’t even make StormRadar full screen without a subscription, what are the adds for? Don’t get me started on the IPad version.. bug city!
I plead with the developers and owners, take a look at the old version of StormRadar and remember what it was like when you were #1, Thank You!

by BrrKsu

StormRadar was amazing a few years ago. Why is there always a need to take something great and “update” it to something that is trash. Every time I open StormRadar , it shows me as somewhere in Africa (I’m in the Midwest USA). When I click the arrow to find my location, StormRadar crashes and closes. Upon reopening StormRadar , it shows my location and sometimes shows the current radar. It no longer shows weather alerts (highlighted counties with active weather watches and warnings), even with the “alerts” button selected, each time I open StormRadar , I have to turn on storm tracks and lightning alerts because it doesn’t remember my preferences anymore. I’ve tried emailing Storm support, but get no response. Ever since “the weather channel” name was added to StormRadar , it turned into trash. TWC is worthless in my opinion anyway. Bring back the old intellicast the way it was before TWC “fixed it”, or at least have your developers read the reviews and fix the bugs. I am away from home a lot of the time and rely on apps like this for weather alerts. It’s just too unreliable anymore. Fix it please

by Djdidjdbd Chejisixj

I’ve used StormRadar for years and loved it. I’ve recommended it to everyone I know. BUT something changed a few months ago after an update and now every single time I open StormRadar it takes me to Africa. I live in Georgia. There is never a time now that it takes me to my location on the first time of opening StormRadar . So I have to close it out and then open it back up again. My husband also has StormRadar and his opens up to Africa as well and when you hit the location icon it takes you to our location but you can’t pull up any forecast information or see the radar or anything. It’s just blank. So no matter what you do you have to close it out and open it back up again. We’ve both tried deleting and reinstalling it. I even went on and paid for the pro version just to get it to stop doing what it was doing and if anything it got worse when I upgraded. I’ve sent messages to the developer (or whoever the feedback goes to) 3 different times and have yet to get any type of response. I’m so disappointed because I have loved StormRadar for so many years and relied on it to keep me informed of any severe weather at home and also where our kids in college are and now I’m trying to find another app that even compares to the way this one used to work.

by NikolaiGranakov

Hi, my name is John Fujita-Beaufort Weathervane and I was an Air Force hurricane hunter pilot before I became a tornado chaser for a big name weather company and I’ve got 45 years of experience with forecasting, even though I’m only 38 - Oh, I didn’t mention, I was orbiting the moon on a secret weather mission to see if there was moon weather, and I was going so fast that time actually slowed down, so that’s why my earth age is 38 but I have those seven extra years of experience. Relativity is a crazy thing! Anyway, StormRadar has brought me so much joy that it brings tears to my eyes every time I open it on my phone. Most of the time it crashes, like that one time my C-130 crashed while hunting a hurricane, and StormRadar has reduced functionality like, well, that one time when my C-130 lost an engine
Come on people this is a terrible app, please review to balance out all of these fake five star ratings. Storm by WU was the best weather app ever, and I gave StormRadar a chance for a long, long time, waiting for it to mature and it has just gotten worse. I’ve never been more sad about a piece of software in my life. 1 star because it works about 20% of the time, because of the baffling amount of patently fake five star reviews, and because I can’t assign a lower score.

by Concerned 343

Don’t waist your time with this ‘upgrade’ —IBM’s ‘new’ Storm Radar app is sadly disappointing and wholly inferior to the original Weather Underground Storm App. It’s a shame to see that IBM purchased the Weather Channel and Weather Underground with the long term intent of implementing dated technology, removing superior competition, and providing decreased value.

The original Storm app had easy access to everything one needs in a weather app, with the ‘new’ Storm Radar Weather app by IBM one would have to use multiple weather apps to even get anywhere near the performance of the original and still they would be lacking. The original WU Storm App helped my family weather Hurricane Harvey and saved us once from running directly in to the path of a tornado. Sad to think that IBM would purposely take away the public’s choice and access to an app that helped so many during Hurricane Harvey and could help countless others in the future.

It’s also sad to see that someone is trying to raise the ratings on StormRadar with all fake 5 Star one line reviews rather than fix StormRadar ’s issues or bring back the original Storm app features — in one month the rating has gone from 2.9 to 4.4 yet nothing has changed with StormRadar .

by Quint41

As others have said, this WAS the best weather app available ... until Weather Channel bought it. There was no need to “improve” upon the best, and they didn’t. We are full-time RVers who MUST HAVE accurate weather information in order to keep ourselves out of danger. I never feel that I can trust Storm Weather now like I used to. For instance, I just spent two solid days trying to decide if I should do a guided nature photo shoot today for $200 non-refundable. Two days I looked at your app and chose Tuesday over Monday for this outing because Monday’s forecast was cloudy, cool and quite windy all day whereas Tuesday was partly sunny, a little warmer and lighter winds. On Tuesday morning, I woke up to rain. After two days of checking StormRadar and feeling confident that Tuesday would be better. Also, when I look at your app, at the top is the symbol for fog; just below it says 42% chance of rain; then there is a heavy fog advisory; then when you look at the hourly forecast it only shows 15% chance of rain for right now. Yet it is raining lightly but steadily. I’m so done with the way you cover all your bases. I need a RELIABLE weather tool. The last thing I need is to be in the path of a tornado and not know it because your app is telling me otherwise.

by 4HisPleasure

StormRadar, which replaced Storm, looks pretty cool with the theming. Unfortunately, that’s about all I have good to say about it. It has just a fraction of Storm’s features and customizability. I sorely miss seeing more details like dewpoint, cloud cover, and pressure in the daily/hourly forecast graphs. And those graphs need to be full screen instead of trimmed down to fit just three days/six hours at a time. The map options are drastically reduced from Storm’s, too. I could go on and on about what StormRadar is missing in comparison. It just baffles me that they removed the best weather app (Storm) before releasing those features in StormRadar. I’m not sure who StormRadar is targeting. On the one hand, there is the great future radar, but some of the forecast details we weather aficionados use to understand what’s coming and how to plan are missing. Hopefully this is just an interim, growing pains gap (akin to Apple Final Cut Pro’s 7 to X), and the missing features will work their way into subsequent versions. In the mean time, StormRadar doesn’t really offer much, so I will have to use a combination of weather apps and websites to piece together the full picture.

by SamThrash94

I had storm for a very long time before this. Paid the $10 for it years ago. Loved it enough to move to the subscription service when they dropped that. I gave this a chance but I refuse to even pay $.99 for the ad free version of this. A few of the issues I have with StormRadar: the touch location feature is horrible I find myself accidentally clicking a location while moving around the radar. The radar centric version with the expandable bottom banner was wonderful over this. Also, why are advisories different colors from the standard! This is probably the biggest complaint, I see a red box around my country and worry it’s a tornado warning... it isn’t. I miss the markups on the radar you could do on storm, you could measure the distance and use this to predict when the front would arrive. Used to love the storm tracks but now they just don’t mesh well, and guess what when I try and tap the storm track to get more information I end up changing the floater box location because it’s easy to accidentally tap a location on the map rather than the track. Lastly, the ability to use local radars was great! I loved being able to look at the velocity track and find the hook when there was a nearby tornado. All in all what was an extremely user friendly and advanced weather app has become another “simplistic” “pretty” ui for the masses, next they will push out an update to include a news feed like the weather channel.

by Brian Cox

I’ve purchased and used at least twelve other weather apps over the last seven (7) plus years and StormRadar is simply a superior product overall with side-by-side comparisons. That said, with the latest app software update, I am now unable to clear any of the many recent current searched weather locations. When I attempt to slide the location text to clear it, StormRadar now crashes and closes up leaving me to start the weather app process all over again. This has become increasingly frustrating and leaving me considering going back to inferior yet more reliable Weather Bug or the original AccuWeather apps. I’ve removed and reinstalled StormRadar with no success whatsoever when rebooted. I hope that this issue is fixed soon as the number of searched locations is well over twenty (20) and currently populating more every day. I’m sure that this cannot help the overall speed and performance of my less than two (2) years old iPad Pro and less than one (1) year old iPhone 8.

by Speedyflyboy1

Radar seems to be very accurate however quite often even with the location services on when I open StormRadar it opens my location in Africa and then whenever I hit the symbol for current location, it gives me the current location however has no weather data or information. I actually have to close out of StormRadar and open it again. I deleted StormRadar before because of that issue with no resolution or reply back after two different emails were sent to the developer. I came back to it however with it working properly and now it’s back to doing what it did before.
Update: (1-8-21) I pay for StormRadar monthly and I constantly have to restore the original purchases about once a day now. Sometimes it takes several attempts for this to happen.

by Downlinerz2

5 MARCH 22 StormRadar is now working and showing the Storm Attributes. At least many of them. Glad it's back to functioning well. Thanks to the Storm Radar team.

I had the previous editions of StormRadar and liked it very much. There are many great features of is app but the “storm attribute”tables opened by clicking on the cell icons were the best for me. There was an abundance of information available on them and I didn’t need to spend a lot of time going from radar to Meso analysis sites to get the info. So I was happy to this version. After I downloaded StormRadar (onto my iPad Air 2 with OS 12.4.1) I immediately opened a cell icon and encountered a major problem. The attributes table opened, for a second, and then disappeared. Now without this feature I can get what is available free on most other radar shows apps. I am waiting and hoping this bug will be fixed in an update but I am not holding my breath. As a major feature I would have thought it would have been a priority. I am very disappointed! UPDATE: 29 OCT 2019 After sending 5 or 6 emails & Feedbacks I have not heard one word from anyone. Not one response. They have my money and that’s apparently all that matters. The only reason I use StormRadar is the cell attributes tables. And I cannot use them at all cause they won’t open longer than a second. It’s sad when they can’t even try to do something about a problem. I was disappointed up above...now I’m angry.

by Stormy83'

My husband works outside for a living so weather is our life. I have had just about every possible weather app out there and I have found Storm Tracker to be the absolute best. My unscientific method for choosing a weather app is to have three weather apps and average them over a certain period of time. The winner hands-down has been Storm Tracker through at least a dozen rounds. It will tell you when it will rain/snow down to the minute and they are accurate over 95% of the time! Now that’s awesome. I love the personalization options that are available. My husband can save the weeks job sites and with one tap know the weather down to street level. Awesome job to the developers!! You have saved my husband from many unneeded road trips due to weather. I can’t say enough about how great StormRadar is for anyone who depends on the weather for their livelihood. Great graphics too!

by Closet Meteorologist

Like many of you, at first glance I thought what a letdown and a waste the new Storm App is compared to the older version. Why would anyone put out a newer version that is inferior to their previous product?

The new Storm Radar is an excellent app once you learn to navigate the new system. Just pulling down on the temperature banner provides you with much more in-depth weather data, probably more than the average person cares to see. Wondering about the weather in another place? Just tap on the map and the weather banner for that location appears, no need to search the city name. Need more detail, just slide downward on the banner and get your information. Monitoring storm systems? Add Storm Tracker in the Radar layers section at the bottom of the page. This will provide you Storm tracking data and by tapping on the storm marker, you will be provided all of the storm detail utilized by the meteorologists! The radar layers at the bottom of the page allows you to customize the data and alerts that you wish to receive.

My daily job is heavily impacted by the weather and storms in general. Also, in my duties as a volunteer firefighter I monitor and depend upon accurate data for fire conditions and tracking storms. The Storm Radar tool is one of the top apps on my phone today. Load it and play with it to discover the many options available to monitor the weather the way you choose.

by Joshybigmac

I downloaded StormRadar about 5 months ago and it was amazing to use. I used it almost every day and had some very useful and insightful information that I like to look at when viewing the weather and the radar. Recent updates have since stripped away all of the functionality that I used to enjoy in favor of a bogus $20 annual fee which wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t additionally extorted by a completely useless app for those who don’t wish to pay. I know this company knows how to do premium — the main The Weather Channel app introduced a premium program a couple months back as well, but instead of forcing users to pay by excluding features they already used, new and exciting features were made available on top of the free experience if they so wished to use them. I don’t understand why the same company could find it so hard to just do the same thing across all their apps. I’ll be sure to telling the people whom I recommended StormRadar to to uninstall it if they haven’t already made the good decision to use the storage StormRadar occupies for something actually worth keeping.

by Thaddeusrex

What’s up with this?! Why did you launch a new app with a fraction of the functionality? I can’t find any of the old options I liked in the older version, like the wind arrows, which were actually amazingly accurate. Much worse. Revert back please.

The loading is horrendous, especially the tropical storm/hurricane tracks, which are the most critical. It’s basically random as to whether storms will show up on my iPad screen or not. I open StormRadar , then sit and stare at it for several minutes. Sometime none will load, so I zoom the view in and out, and sometimes that eventually works. Sometimes some storms will load, but not others.

After all that, I still keep going back to the old version to view the wind arrows (which are my favorite feature, and are gone now), and going through the “OOPS, there’s an upgrade!” Screen, just so I can see where the arrows go into a tight circle, which indicates a hurricane. The arrows are so accurate, last year they predicted hurricanes before any service, or other data did! Bring back the arrows!