It is amazing how much photographers rely on their phones. Not only as a way to share their work, communicate and take photos, but as a way to help get better images. I have written stories for photography magazines on the best apps for photographers, but they change so often there is always something better. My favorite apps include PhotoPills for finding the galactic core, Aurora Forcast for predicting northern lights, Flight Tracker Pro for air travel and Maps for general street navigation. Of course weather apps are always handy, and I now have a new favorite, Dark Sky.
Honestly, there are a bunch of great radar and weather apps. But what I like about Dark Sky is it puts them all together in one app. First you have the obvious hour by hour forecast. Click in the map to get a radar view that also shows future cast storm movement. Right at the top of the screen Dark Sky will tell you if any rain is forecast in next hour. You can toggle displays between temps, percent chance of rain and precipitation rates. And one really cool feature at the bottom, Time Machine, let you see what the weather has been doing in the area you are traveling to in past days, months and years. I used this feature recently in Ouray trying to find out how cold it had been in the past week to predict fall colors. Very cool!
But the bottom line is Dark Sky is just accurate. In Alaska last summer Dark Sky constantly was more accurate than the others apps we were using for weather forecasts. At $3.99 this is one app every photographer will want.