Weather Underground reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A hyperlocal weather service built on a network of private personal weather stations: it beats native apps on backyard-level accuracy, but loses the trust of those same users whenever interface updates break the load-bearing elements they relied on — the location marker, the future radar, saved locations.
What users love
The personal-weather-station network turns 'accuracy' from a promise into a verifiable fact
The core loyalty mechanism: the app pulls from NWS-registered home stations tied to the user's exact zip code, so the forecast is anchored to their street, not their city. Dog-walkers, gardeners, farmers and boaters stay for years precisely because they can check the forecast against reality in their own backyard — and it matches.
Because it pulls data from sources in your area, it is updated with changes and gives the most accurate and up-to-date forecast I have found.
it's local, using NWS registered home weather stations specific to my zip code
very accurate and has actual local weather station reports
Connecting your own weather station makes the user a co-owner of the data
A narrow but extremely strong lock-in: owners of personal weather stations get 'their own' real-time report and embed into the product so deeply that leaving would mean losing their own data channel. It converts a passive weather-watcher into a participant in the network.
Excellent app. Easy connecting to my personal weather station.
Works seamlessly with my weather station. Love having my own weather report that is up to the minute.
I like the local agglomeration of data and ability to look at each station
The drill-down architecture — overview on top, detail on demand — holds both novices and data nerds
The product serves two segments on one screen: a quick snapshot for people who just want a glance, and deep layers (barometric pressure, fronts, almanac, sun/moon times) for those who want to dig. That rare mix of low entry and high ceiling keeps users for 10+ years.
Good high level overview, & I can drill down for detail if I want to.
Has everything I need including the daily barometric pressure reading.
I journal almanac info daily. Sun and Moon rise/set times are very helpful to me.
Graphs over lists — a visual language that sets the product apart from other weather apps
A strong perceptual differentiator: users specifically value that temperature, wind and precipitation are shown graphically rather than as a bare list. It lowers the cognitive load of planning a day or week and becomes a standalone reason for preference.
Graphical information vs a list like most apps. I like it.
Allows you to see graphs of the temperature and easily displays future forecasts.
I like the graphical presentations so I can have an overview of tgexweather coming up.
Activity forecasts (bike, run, golf) turn weather from information into a decision
A subtle retention mechanism: instead of raw numbers, the app answers 'is today good for my activity'. Golfers, runners, cyclists and field workers bind to it because the product plans a specific activity for them, not just reports temperature. It turns a weather app into a lifestyle tool.
the long distant forecasts, including Bike and Running forecasts are very helpful
I can personalize the settings to tell me when the weather will be good for activities I like to do
my goto app for predictions whether my golf league play or not for the last 10 years
The 'warmer/cooler than yesterday' comparison — a tiny feature that gives a number instant meaning
An underrated behavioral hook: people don't remember yesterday's degrees, and an instant comparison answers the real question — 'how should I dress today'. A small detail users single out as a favorite because it saves a mental step every day.
Love the feature which quickly tells me is it cooler or warmer than yesterday.
Very specific weather info from my own neighborhood, or wherever I want to go.
I can see more temps in my local area
What users hate
Removing the location marker from the map broke the core gesture — 'where am I relative to the storm'
A single interface change destroyed a safety workflow: users watched the radar to see a storm's position relative to themselves, and without a dot on the map that's impossible. For travelers and tornado-watchers the app went from survival tool to useless — and they explicitly say the reason to stay is gone.
now they have removed your location marker. Why? Even if you hit the location icon. What if you are traveling?
Almost completely useless without the location marker on the map.
My favorite weather app. But why did the location dot on the radar go away?
The future radar was the signature feature — cutting it to 'last 5 minutes' erased the edge
The whole value of radar is seeing what's coming, not what already passed. By removing the forecast mode and leaving only the last 2 hours or 5 minutes, the product stripped out exactly the thing it was chosen for over AccuWeather. Long-time users read it as the reason to use the app being gone.
new upgrade sucks. can't run the future map anymore. only back 2 hours to now. used to be the best app to see what's coming. what a disappointment
cannnot switch from past/future radar
you are presented with a whopping last 5 min of weather. As if that was at all useful. How about a future cast ?
Saved locations make it a traveler's tool — and their periodic disappearance hits exactly that use case
Multi-location tracking is itself a reason for choosing the app: people watch weather where family lives, where they're heading, what to pack. When updates wipe all saved locations overnight, round after round, it breaks the very feature that bound travelers and families — and trust in the product as a reliable place to store them collapses.
round 3 of losing all my saved locations overnight. very frustrating app.
I gave this app a second chance and again all my saved locations disappeared.
I can save locations, even international cities, making travel decisions and packing way easier.
Uncontrollable notifications turn a useful channel into noise and train the user to ignore them
The lack of notification settings is a behavioral trap: the user gets up to 14 empty pushes a day and can't choose what to react to. So they mute everything — and lose exactly the critical storm alerts. The paradox: to escape the noise, the user silences the one function a weather app exists for.
I get at least 14 notifications a day. They're all for nothing.
why is there not a setting to control what I get notifications for?
No ability to control notifications other than on/off, and when on makes notification sounds seemingly at random.
A multi-year reputation for accuracy is the core asset — and each real-time miss damages it harder than usual
The product is sold as the most accurate, so even a rare miss on rain or temperature reads as a betrayal rather than ordinary error. Users who trusted WU more than local news delete it after a single storm miss — the high accuracy bar turns loyalty fragile.
This app for me used to be the most accurate for rain accumulation. Especially within 24hours. Now it's terrible.
forecasts of zero% rain are updated to high rain percentages, seemingly synchronizing the updates with observable weather changes!
three different forcasts depending on where you are on the app. the radar is about an hour behind actual weather.
Slow loads and a full reload on defocus break the 'quick weather glance' use case
A weather app is checked on the move, in seconds — yet here the screen takes 6 seconds to load and fully reloads the moment you defocus it. That directly contradicts the primary usage pattern (a quick look), and users switch to another app before the data appears, even when they like the data itself.
Takes 6 seconds to load, anyone remember dial up modems?
good weather but slow to load and always reloads entirely if defocused
it doesnt load many times. very slow. it has become incredibly unreliable and I often just use another weather app
Ads that grow to cover the whole screen cancel the app's only job — seeing the weather
This is the one ad-themed card, and it's about a product mechanism, not a gripe: the ads took over the space where the content should be, so on the free tier the user physically can't see the weather. In a category where value is read in a second, covering the screen with ads breaks the core job-to-be-done and pushes people to competitors.
now the adds cover the entire page. what good is a weather app if you cant see the weather. uninstalled
It's sad that there is more focus on ads than reporting the weather.
it has filthy adds that are stuck on the top of it that don't allow me shut them off
Confusing navigation hides the forecast — users find the data, but not on the first try
A structural issue: moving between hourly, weekly and 10-day forecasts isn't obvious, and from the 'today' top screen there's no clear path to the rest. It doesn't scare off loyalists (they dig anyway), but it raises the entry barrier for newcomers and costs stars even from users who praise the accuracy.
not one clue about how to see weekly fore cast or z Anything but today. I know you have great stuff, but no dots.
it could be set up easier to find the hourly vs weekly vs 10 day forecast
The layout is a little less intuitive than others and it's sometimes hard to find what I'm looking for quickly, but it is usually there if i look hard enough.
A polite location request (asks, doesn't demand) builds trust — but new ToS undermine it
A subtle reputational mechanism: some users specifically note the app politely asks for location access, and that wins them over. But the new terms requiring GPS to be always on, plus suspicion of constant tracking and data-selling, erode that same trust — especially among privacy-sensitive users ready to leave for the NWS site.
asked instead of demanding location access. refreshing, even if it's bare minimum.
there was a new "Terms of Service" stating that GPS must be on to use it. This app constantly spies on you and they are most likely selling all your data with its constant tracking.
the GPS, your location, does not work, and I can't get weather informations when clicking on the warnings polygons on the weather map