After exchanging textbooks for employee guidelines two years ago, I’ve become something of a weather junkie: is it going to snow today? Will today’s rain screw up the trains? If it’s 50 degrees Farenheit when I leave the house for work but 70 degrees Farenheit when I return home eight hours later, then what should I wear at the office?
This is where obssessive weather updates come in handy, such as Dashboard’s default weather widget and websites like The Weather Channel and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
You can even check out a weather widget for the NOAA, thanks to developer Matthew Williamson. The wealth of information comes at a cost-namely, instant gratification. After putting your location into the back of the main “NOAA” circle, the widget pulls the necessary weather information from the internet, divided into four squares: “Radar,” “Forecast,” “Alerts,” and “Current.”
Clicking the “Forecast” square in the top-left corner gives you a seven-day forecast in separate bubbles, each showing a photo-realistic image of the forecast (sunny clouds, rain, etc). This effect isn’t instantaneous but I’m still awed by the strong, “Cool!” factor. The NOAA Weather Center widget also provides detailed information about radar patterns, current local conditions and any applicable alerts. It can’t help you control the weather (yet) but you’ll be too inundated with humidity levels and rain predictions to notice.
[Edited to fix developer information]
Looks like this widget was developed by a third party and not the NOAA.
@Mike: Thanks for the heads up. It's been fixed.