The weather plays a crucial role in our everyday lives. It tells us what activities we can safely and comfortably partake in on any given day at any given hour. It lets us know whether we should carry along our raincoats or our sunscreen, and it helps us decide how to dress when we wake up in the morning. Knowing the weather can even be life-saving in the event that a severe tornado or hurricane is approaching your area, requiring that you take cover or evacuate. It is, therefore, extremely important that you have easy access to accurate information about the weather so that you can plan your days accordingly. With your iPhone at your side, there is no longer any need to turn on the weather channel or check on your computer to receive up-to-date information about the weather. Although the iPhone comes equipped with a built-in weather tool, it can only offer the basics such as the predicted high and low temperatures for the day. For that reason, we have put together a review of the best weather apps available in the Apple App Store.

• The Weather Channel

The first app on our list is The Weather Channel. One of the most popular and useful apps available, it provides you with access to a wide range of information about the weather including the temperature, wind speed, humidity, the UV index, the dew point, and more for a given area. It also provides you with the hourly, 36-hour, and 10-day forecast so that you can plan the upcoming days well in advance. Other useful features include an interactive map with animated radar, the Social feature that enables you to read and post tweets about weather in your area, and the iWitness feature where users can view and upload images and videos of the local weather conditions. US users also receive notifications about severe weather alerts. Best of all, the app is completely free. The one complaint that users often report is that it has large, distracting advertisements, but dealing with such ads is worth it to keep such a useful app free of charge.

• Weather HD

Weather HD is next on our list due to its absolutely stunning visuals. Weather HD goes beyond giving you the basic information such as the current temperature, highs and lows, humidity, chance of rain, and wind speed. In addition to providing all of that, it takes advantage of the iPhone’s high-tech screen to present you with vibrant, high-definition videos that represent what the weather currently looks like in your area. If it currently storming outside in your area, the background of the app will be an HD video of a thunderstorm; if it is sunny and slightly cloudy, sunlight and clouds is exactly what you will see on your screen. In fact, these video representations are so accurate that they even represent the current time of day so that the graphics are lighter during the day and darker at night. The utter eye candy that this app will provide you is well worth the $0.99 you will spend on Weather HD.

• AccuWeather for iPhone

The next app on our list, AccuWeather for iPhone, is another free app that is very similar to The Weather Channel app. With AccuWeather, you can view the 15-day forecast for your area or an area to which you are traveling so that you can plan the next two weeks ahead of time. AccuWeather offers an enormous database of weather data with information on over 2.7 million locations throughout the world. Useful features include severe weather alerts, calendar integration, social sharing options that enable you to effortlessly share weather updates with your loved ones, interactive maps, and contact location viewing so that you can see the weather where any of your contacts live. In addition, AccuWeather is a must-have if you suffer from weather-related health issues such as allergies since it gives health-related forecasts. It will even let you know how suitable the current weather conditions are for outdoor activities such as walking your dog or mowing your lawn. The only issue that many users have reported is that the latest version, 5.0.1, has a somewhat cluttered interface.

• PocketWeather

Finally, the last app on our list, PocketWeather, is notable, not only for its extensive feature set, but also because it is available in a lengthy list of languages. Whether you speak English, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, German, Hebrew, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, or Danish, PocketWeather will satisfy your weather-information needs. The app is able to provide you extremely accurate information about the predicted temperatures, highs and lows, humidity, hourly forecast dawn, sunrise, sunset, zenith, precipitation, and dusk times for the upcoming ten days. Moreover, it comes with useful features including earthquake maps, temperature graphs, coverage of the sun and moon, and an up-to-date summary of the weather conditions in your area at the moment. PocketWeather is another free app that provides you with much more information than the iPhone’s built-in weather tool.

The App Store is loaded with weather apps, and we have picked out four of the best for your convenience. After reading our review simplify your life by heading over to the App Store to download the one that best suits your needs.

Thanks to John Page for this guest post. E-mail him.

Read more:

• How to connect your iPad to the TV: Different methods – http://www.softwarewithstyle.com/guides/16
• iPhone battery life – http://www.softwarewithstyle.com/question/show/id/34
• 10 Useful, little-known facts about the iPhone – http://www.softwarewithstyle.com/guides/12