Review: Hurricane Info

[cjvitek]

Okay, I used to live in Florida, and now I live on the gulf coast of Texas. Anyone that lives in these areas, or near these areas, knows about hurricanes. From about June to November, I would be checking the various weather websites daily (my favorite was Welcome to Weather Underground : Weather Underground) to keep an eye on hurricane status. I longed for a program on my Treo, and then on the iPhone, to be able to check this information with ease.

Enter Hurricane Info.

Unlike other weather programs, Hurricane Info focuses only on the devastating hurricanes that keep people worried. From the main screen, you can choose any active hurricane in and select it to determine the specifics. The main buttons includes the 5 day cone, the outlook, sotrm track. You can also select from 12 other options ranging from satellite images to probability charts to storm history tracking.

All in all, for anyone who is worried about hurricanes hitting their area, this is a handy tool to have. Of course, you use a data connection to keep it up to date (no setting on how often to refresh the information) so it wifi and cell towers are down (due to hurricanes) you are out of luck.

Now, onto the bad. While this program gives you the basics, I was a little disappointed with the graphics. It uses the standard NOAA website graphics (probably just importing them) but they aren't very impressive. The NOAA graphics go for simplicity, while other sites (wuch as Wunderground) gives you more details.

Also, I found some features that would be useful were missing. Where are the model predictions? Where is the three day cone? Where is the wind speed chart? These are all things that could be imported.

My guess is that the program uses NOAA because it is public domain. Using other sites (Wunderground, Skeetobite Weather, etc) might require paying them (although they are free online, so you never know). Being a big Wunderground fan, it would also be great to see Dr. Masters hurricane blog.

It would also be nice to be able to move to landscape mode to have the "menu bar" at the bottom vanish and have a larger image. Given that this program costs $2.99, some other weather sites probably have rules about other people making a profit on their work.

Pros: Important information at your fingertips.

Cons: Interface is less than perfect, some information seems to be missing.

All in all, this is an okay program that provides what can be critical information. But it has some information that is lacking, and I found that it could be presented in a better fashion. At the time, it was the only hurricane program around - now there is another (although it costs more). I may try to get that one - it looks like it is a little nicer.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.