Living in New England means that I need a good weather application that gives me real-time local conditions and forecasts.  Browsing the iTunes application store there are a lot of weather apps, some free some paid.  The free applications didn’t really do all that I needed so I ended up choosing WeatherBug Elite (iTunes link)  mostly because I use it on my computers and because the price was right at $.99.  The other program I found that seemed to fit the bill is the Weather Channel Max (iTunes link) but that goes for $3.99 and I was being frugal the day I bought WeatherBug Elite.

Some of the features of WeatherBug Elite are

• Ad-free live, local weather conditions and forecasts.
• 7 day and hourly forecasts.
• National Weather Service alerts.
• Radar maps with zoom and animation features.
• 6 map layers; infrared, satellite, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, next day high and next day low temperature.

There is an ad-supported version that doesn’t have as many features but is free (iTunes link).  I prefered to pay the $.99 to get rid of the ads which can be very intrusive.

What I love about WeatherBug is the local conditions.  I southwest of Boston and while it’s nice to see Boston’s forecast many times it is not the same as my forecast.  WeatherBug gives me a weather point close to my home.  I also love the radar with animation which will come in handy during the summer when I am at the pool and it looks like thunderstorms are on the horizon, I can see real-time radar for where the storms are heading.

A couple of features I would love to see are

• use the current location for users of 3GS iPhones.
• push notifications for weather alerts.

I haven’t tried out any other weather applications.  Do you have a favorite weather application to share?