As my family prepared to buckle down and change holiday plans once we realized a blizzard was heading toward the East Coast, I tried out a number of sites to gather more information about what the storm meant for us in Boston.
Google search results
Searching for a key phrase that relates to weather in a location triggers the search results page to display the forecast for that area above the other search results and news. This has been the best way for me to quickly find out what’s going on and what the forecast is for tomorrow. From there I can click to view a more detailed report from various sources.
Pros: shows exactly what I’m looking for very quickly, with the ability to find more if I’m interested
Cons: none, really! This is the perfect way to get your initial overview of the weather. If you’re looking for more details, you can easily click to see them in the Detailed forecast links.
MASSPORT Logan Airport: Arrivals chart
The Flight Tracker allowed me to check the status of our families’ flights and their opportunities to get on different flights easily. You can search by airline, origin, or flight number. I’ve also seen the Flight Tracker for other airports as well (EWR).
Pros: intuitive searching and sorting. Clear legend and gates
Cons: takes a long time to load (but it’s worth the wait!)
Weather In Motion
The Weather In Motion map on weather.com is awesome – it shows you the moving radar scan of the weather, but it also lets you click and drag as well as zoom in to examine how the weather’s affecting other areas. It has a good zoom tool and legend, allows you to preview the next six hours, pause and rewind/fast-forward. My favorite part of the map was that it overlaid the radar onto both satellite projections of the area and road projections. I wish that weather.com was faster, but I’m keeping this tool up in my browser for the next 24 hours.
Pros: lots of flexibility with intuitive navigation, answers lots of questions about present and future weather
Cons: inability to embed, too many clicks to search for a new location
