WeatherBug Elite

I love this iPhone app. It's beyond useful and of all of the apps I have installed on my iPhone, it's the one I use the most. OK....so I'm a bit anal when it comes to the weather and I have no less than six weather apps on my phone....but WeatherBug Elite is heads and tails above all of the others.

I walk a couple of miles each morning and this gives me incredibly detailed and precise information as to what's going on at my location. It starts when I crank the app up. Using the iPhone's GPS capabilities, it pinpoints my location and then adjusts all of the data accordingly:

On the main screen, I get a readout of the current conditions and a brief forecast:

When I click on the next screen, I get a detailed forecast:

And I can click once more to get an hourly breakout of the weather:

But the live radar is, by far, the best feature of Weatherbug Elite. I can get an up-to-the minute snapshot of radar/precipitation/lightning in my area (or for the whole country). There is also a time lapse button that lets me see the exact direction and speed of the storm:

This feature has proven to be invaluable on my morning walk, ensuring that I don't get stuck on the far side of the lake when the storm hits. It's also been extremely useful for my son Patrick's baseball games...I can plainly see in advance when a game will get called due to weather. And I was also recently at a classic car show when the skies started to darken. A lot of the car collectors were getting nervous and I was able to warn them that a hail storm was imminent. They were able to get their cars out of there before the hail started crashing down from the heavens.

Weatherbug Elite has a ton more features...too many to go into here. But suffice it to say that it is the most useful and most used app that I have on my iPhone. And at $1.99, I think it's the bargain of the century. There is also a separate iPad app with more elaborate functionality. And while I have that, too, I think the most important weather app is the one you have in your pocket. If you spend any amount of time outdoors or have a kid involved in outdoor sports, you really need this app. Get yours at the Apple App Store.