by Carlee Tibbs

Created on: October 14, 2010   Last Updated: October 16, 2010

WeatherBug is a free application for the BlackBerry and not only tells you the current weather and temperature, it also gives you a five day forecast. There is an option to upgrade to the “Elite” version and this costs £3.99 GBP or $4.99 USD. Although intended for use on BlackBerry Storm models, it works on any BlackBerry smartphone. I tested this application on a BlackBerry Curve 8520.

When you load up the application for the first time, it asks you to either enter your ZIP code (for the US only) or to enter the name of your city. As I don’t live in the US, I entered the name of my city into the box provided and scrolled through the list until I found mine.

There is a lot of information packed into one screen; the top section contains current weather information such as temperature, wind direction and speed and the general weather type (i.e. - sunny, overcast, etc). The middle section contains the general weather type again and the highest and lowest temperatures expected. The bottom section has a five day summary forecast and this tells you the general weather type, highest temperature expected and the lowest temperature expected.

Although there is a lot of information packed into one screen, it is very clearly laid out and doesn’t look at all cluttered.

The default settings for the temperature and wind speed units are in Fahreneit and miles per hour respectively but these can be changed to measure temperature in Celsius and wind speed in kilometres per hour.

At first glance, this appears to be a very simple BlackBerry application and contains a very small amount of information relating to the weather - both current and forecasted - but if you click on the BlackBerry menu button, you will see that there is more information about the weather available.

Here is a rundown of the optional screens I found to be really useful to me.

FORECAST:
This screen gives you a six day forecast (seven days if you include the current day) and at first, just gives you the same information you get on the overview screen. If you scroll across to your right, you get a much better description of the weather to be expected for each day. Some of the information included is: weather type, average temperature expected and a highest and lowest temperature expected, wind speed and direction and humidity percentage.

ALERTS:
This will tell you of any weather warnings for your area / city.

CURRENT CONDITIONS:
This screen gives you the current temperature, the highest and lowest expected temperatures of the day, how much rain has fallen for this day, month and year, current humidity percentage, highest and lowest expected humidity percentage, wind speed and direction and the times for sunrise and sunset.

When I first installed this application for my BlackBerry, I was disappointed in how little information I received on the weather. The overview screen showed me nothing more than I could have guessed by looking outside my window. Once I looked around, however, I found that there was a wealth of information about the current weather and the weather that has been forecasted for the following six days.

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