There are quite a few weather utilities available online that can be downloaded and used for free. Most of these also have a “premium version,” where you pay for a year’s subscription and you get extra features, ads removed, etc. There are some programs that don’t have a free version and I have excluded them from this list, focusing only on ones that can be freely used in some format. I have personally downloaded and installed each of these, so the comments are from actually trying the programs. All of these say there’s no spyware. They all claim to have “real-time” severe weather notification also.

AccuWeather.com Desktop - Has ads. Ad-free version being considered. Time/conditions alternating in System Tray. Has Mini-Desktop that takes as much space as your AIM Buddy List. Requires 5 MB of diskspace. Mini-Desktop has very nice looking radar image and local conditions. Desktop Alerts is a separate program that seems to have replaced the original. It’s no longer a “mini-desktop” because it’s much wider and gives almost equal space to ads and weather info. That’s sad. Still, the radar does have an “animate” link which animates the radar right in the same window. Tabs above the radar include Forecast Details, Radar, Satellite, More Maps, & Alert. Desktop Alerts can have up to 20 “trigger words or phrases” and personalized interests, so when an article appears that has one of those, it lets you know. I couldn’t figure out where those articles were coming from, though. United States only.

TheWeatherChannel Desktop has been around for a while. It also has ads, but they’re only banner ads and you can pay to have them removed ($29.99 per year). The Weather Channel is one of the places I put the most trust in with regard to their weather reporting. You get a 10-Day forecast on top of the current conditions. You also get Live Local Traffic reports. THAT’S nice. ON the “Desktop,” you can display the forecast for the next couple of days or click Current Weather Details to get everything that’s going on today. There’s a secondary pop-out from there with the next 4 days’ forecast, but you have to upgrade to Desktop Max for that. :-) When you download the program and install it, you find yourself being asked to install the Yahoo! Toolbar for I.E. as well, so UNcheck the box if you don’t want that. There’s a Weather Channel toolbar for Internet Explorer and they also have resources for Macs: a Dashboard Widget and a Mac Screensaver. Includes 100,000 cities worldwide.

Weather Depot - Has banner ads. Sometimes flashy ones. “Premium” version eliminates ads for $29.95/year or $14.95/3-months or $19.95/6-months). One of the features I really like about this one is the Hourly Weather Planner that shows the next 12 hours’ conditions side by side, with the Daily Weather Planner below showing the next five dayparts. Radar is always visible if you want, with the other display options buttonized below it. Includes a “Weather Ticker” that scrolls along the bottom much like what’s done on television. Zoom buttons and radar motion buttons are all intuitive. They are related to a similar site called WeatherPerHour. Only within contiguous United States. Southern Canada may be added soon. Download doesn’t seem to be working right now, but check back later. I HAVE used this product before and I liked it. Minimum diskspace: 12MB.

Weather Exchange - This is a totally different creature. Their emphasis is on how city weather forecasts and conditions are often based on the closest airport, which can be quite a ways away. Instead, they’ve put together a network of personal weather stations, using people with computers, internet access, and weather stations that they’ve purchased. Data are collected from individuals who upload their weather information continuously to the Wunderground server. The interface itself has a really nice look to it. Banner ads, but only weather related. Standard sized screen (800×600) has lots of weather data, including normal and record recordings, almanac info, and a 5-day forecast. “Spans the globe,” but local radar and advisories are limited to the U.S. Yes, it’s local, but operationally it looks like it’s half to one hour behind. It does display when the data were last updated, and so far on my computer with my closest personal weather station, it’s been about an hour behind. Minimum diskspace: 2MB.

Weather Watcher - This one has what I think is probably the cleanest, nicest-looking interface of all of these programs. It looks like they get their data from weather.com. The main screen has buttons for Update, Current, Hourly, Daily, Maps, Alerts, & Options. The Current screen has current, today, and tonight in the main body along with temp (thermometer on the side), wind gauge and barometric pressure gauge. Across the bottom there are forecasted conditions for the next 8 hours. The Hourly button gives you a list of conditions forecasted for each hour for the next two days. Daily does the same thing for the next 10 days. Incredible amounts of customization possibilities with this program, too, including skins. Radar maps are rather buried under “Maps,” thought. I wish you could put radar in the main window. One cool thing that this program does that the others don’t is give you a wallpaper with your choice of maps and frequency of updating. I’ve got a satellite image of the central U.S. that updates every minute. THAT’S cool!! Maybe a bit of overkill, but still cool! Over 77,000 cities worldwide. Minimum diskspace: 5.8MB.

Weather1 - No ads. That’s probably Weather1’s biggest selling point. You only get one version of this program offered because there’s no special version that has ads removed. They’re just not there. They do have a purchasable version, though. For $18 you can register your copy, which will remove “occasional small shareware notices.” (I read this in the fine print.) It’s also $8.95 for upgrades once you’ve registered. This program is produced by one person. All the descriptions and instructions refer to “me” and “I.” Apparently the program has been available to the public for 10 years now. Since the main window is narrow, there’s an option to display a weather image that you choose alongside. There’s a “Multi-City” tab that allows you to display the conditions at your favorite places on the same screen. Also can display EPA pollution levels, if you’re in a city where that’s more of a concern. You can customize the look and feel by modifying the .html template. Comes with its own Taskbar, too. This one also allows you to use images for wallpaper, but I found it very clunky and difficult to use. You had to get the weather log running and draw the images from there, and I never did seem to get that log working right. Sure wasn’t intuitive. Still, it has great reviews from its users. The description and features of this program sound really good, but in practice I was disappointed. The number of cities and easy of use were both low. I’d think that after 12 years of use (10 available to the public), they’d have overcome these limitations. Covers “over 6,000 cities worldwide.”

WeatherBug - Probably the most famous of the weather-related programs, WeatherBug was initially accused of being (or housing) spyware–an accusation they vehemently deny. This program seems to be more ad-driven than any of the others and you have to reselect your “sponsor” every couple of weeks, it seems. But, again, you can get WeatherBug Plus for $19.95/year, which not only gets rid of ads, but provides a digital forecast, regional lightning maps, and historical weather data. One strength of WeatherBug is that they’ve gotten major buyin from local TV news stations, so you see the local channel’s logo and know that they’re providing data for WeatherBug (along with other local weather stations). The interface is easy to use and pleasant to look at. The main screen has current conditions and forecast for the next three dayparts. The right side has tabs for Cameras, Radar, Photos, & Storm Central. There are also links to weather blogs and downloads for mobile devices. If you’ve purchased the ad-free version, you’ll be much happier with it. They also have a Mac Version. And for what it’s worth they also have a purely online version, often still sponsored by local television stations. Visit http://weather.weatherbug.com/world-weather.html for weather around the world. Minimum diskspace: 5.1 MB.

So there you go. The top 7 free weather utilities available for download today. I’ve done the work for you. Now you can choose the one you like and stay informed. Unless you use Firefox and want to download the ForecastFox plugin. That’s pretty cool, too, but much less detailed.

[tags]weather, utilities, downloads, freeware, shareware[/tags]