The (un)belief in all weather apps

It was raining cats and dogs this weekend. What a lovely expression from our neighbors. It went from bare legs on the balcony to putting on a raincoat in the blink of an eye. That's why the entire editorial team was refreshing their favorite weather apps to see in which time slot the terrace was a good idea. But let's talk about those apps for a moment.

Which app you use to predict the weather is a bit like which church you used to go to. Some are devoutly faithful to Apple's, while others rely on Weeronline. I personally believe in the Buienradar app, mainly because that prediction often works out well for me. It's always drier in that app than it actually is, and I'm quite optimistic by nature. Research shows that I'm not alone in this, as Buienradar is a popular choice in our country. Not surprising when you consider that we have to cycle between the showers. That's what I use it for the most. Can I take the dog out or not, do I need to wear a jacket or not, is grabbing the bike a good idea or not?.

Then there's the prediction from your iPhone app based on The Weather Channel; you can't get a bigger disappointment. Every time I open that thing, I see rain. Rain yesterday, rain today, rain tomorrow, and rain next week. The only unfortunate thing is that app is often quite accurate. Even if you don't want it to be. Weeronline is another one like that; May swears by this weather provider. They hand out those cozy scores. Even for a game of golf, you get a weather score, even if you don't play golf. Only, the weather can suddenly drop from a solid 9 to a miserable 7, and that's dangerous.

Droidapp.nl subjects various apps to a test every year. So you actually have an assessment of the weather apps. The only unfortunate thing is that they don't include The Weather Channel from Apple in this story, but why am I not surprised? It actually scores quite accurately, according to some Google research. The assessment from Droidapp.nl is not about how nice something looks or user-friendliness, but just a hard score on whether an app predicts the weather correctly. I find that refreshing. What turns out? The apps that are most accurate in predicting the weather are those from KNMI and WeerXL.

Goodness, I don't have either of those on my phone (*download the KNMI one as fast as you can). We could have known this.