The Storm Radar app is picking up some AI upgrades

Every day, we take for granted just how many decisions we make based on weather predictions. From how we dress, to how we plan the rest of our week, foreknowledge of the weather is absolutely essential to our day-to-day lives. But are you using the best information when you do that? And are you willing to pay for that data? Those are the questions The Weather Company wants you asking as we check out the latest changes coming to its Storm Radar app.

We’ve already got a lot of good options for checking the weather forecast, and in addition to the Pixel Weather app so many of us rely on, you’ve got your pick from lots of high-quality third-party weather apps. If you haven’t heard of Storm Radar before, despite it coming to you from the company behind The Weather Channel and Weather Underground, there’s very good reason for that: Right now, it’s only available as an iOS app. But that’s changing soon, and Storm Radar is due to hit Android before the end of the year.

Ahead of that landing, the iOS edition is getting a bit of an overhaul, including what Weather Company VP James Belanger calls, “generative AI and high-resolution radar to empower every user to understand and respond to weather like never before.” For as burnt-out as some of you might be feeling towards AI already, this actually sounds like a decently smart use for it — just be clear that we’re talking about using AI for asking the app questions about the weather (“Is this a good afternoon to go for a walk?”) rather than forming the forecast itself.

So, what’s the catch? Well, if you want all that Storm Radar offers, unlocking its premium features isn’t exactly cheap. Right now, that alone will run you $4/month or $20/year. Or access to premium app features can be bundled in with Weather Channel Premium Pro subscriptions, priced at $5/month or $30/year. It does sound like you can get quite a lot out of the app without paying, but valuable tools like the 72-hour radar and advanced map layers are paywalled behind the premium plan.

Considering how much you’ve got riding on your forecast being accurate, maybe that kind of subscription makes sense to you — it won’t take more than one rained-out concert to offset to expense of even an annual plan. But actually convincing users to make that kind of investment? Well, we certainly look forward towards seeing how Android users react once they get their hands on Storm Radar sometime later this year.