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This Weather Site is Hot

by Dian Chapman, MVP, MOS
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Skill rating level 1.

You may already have a favorite place to check the daily weather, but I'm going to tell you about my favorite just in case you need a place to find out what's coming your way.

I discovered The Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com/) many years ago. Over the years I've learned to appreciate it more and more. And it's gotten better and better over the years, too.

This site is free to anyone who wants to visit. However, you'll be hit with flashing ads unless you pay a small fee ($10 I believe) to become a member to have a more private experience without the annoyance. I've paid to be a member of the site for several years. It's a small fee to pay to get a year's worth of noiseless information! (So the images you'll see here may look slightly different than what a non-member would see.)

I think it's a great site and head over to it several times a day to check out what's up outside, as well as what's coming. I particularly like the daily details. If you're familiar with Chicago weather, it can drastically change from hour to hour. So, if I need to run errands or make sure I get out before it rains or drops 40 degrees!...I can check out these details to see what's ahead so I can take advantage of the best part of the day.

The Caribbean is pretty quiet this time of the year. But during the wicked Katrina and Rita hurricane season, it was incredible watching things transpire. Nearly all the maps have an animation button to allow you to see the last several hours move across your screen. This helps when trying to figure out which direction the various weather patterns are moving.

As a pilot, Greg obviously has a lot of access to sophisticated weather information. But as a quick check before he decides whether to head up to his plane, he likes the various Aviation maps they offer.

Another really cool feature that I'm sure some folks would find useful is the ability to easily customize and print a nice looking Weather Flyer, as shown below. You can enter your zip code to match your location. Then you get a nice page you can print to hang in your meeting center or hotel lobby to show visitors what to expect for the day.

And then there are the photos! They have an absolutely amazing library of weather/nature photos.

You can get utterly lost in these photos for hours...they are beautiful and wicked! A click shows you a fuller version and you can register to vote and even submit your own photos.

But what I love is to be able to right click and set some amazing photo as the image for my desktop. Below is an image of my current desktop. I love trees!

They also recently added a screen saver. I checked it out and it's really nice. Very cool/pretty images display on your screen in various locations around your desktop when you're not using your PC.

Plus, unlike 99.9% of the free screen savers on the web, The Weather Underground expressly says that they promise you will NOT be hit by any type of hidden spyware from downloading/installing their screen saver. And I believed them! They've never tried to pull any tricks on me from their site and have always been straight forward about what you can expect. While installing it, my anti spyware software didn't complain, so I'm sure they kept their promise. If you want a very pretty, safe, screen saver...free...be sure to check it out.

Another feature I take advantage of is their daily email forecast and severe weather alerts. Unlike other ones that want you to install their special (spyware loaded and annoying) weather alert software, this site simply sends you a daily email letting you know what's up for the week, although they have a large variety of special emails you can add to be alerted to special weather changes/conditions.

The Weather Underground web site is just a nice, informative site that I've come to depend on as often as I feel the need. I keep a link to it set on my quick links in my browser so I can easily access our local radar, like this stinkin' March snow storm that is about to hit Chicago tomorrow!<sigh>

And yes, for those of you who don't live in the US, you can zone into your own little part of the world and get all these same feature for your local weather. Looks like London isn't seeing much more sun than Chicago is these days!

If you're into weather, just need to know what's up any time during the day or want to see some incredible photos, head over to http://www.wunderground.com/ and snoop around. There's a lot to discover over there.

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