Weather apps are great when you want to know the forecast, but only if you will remain in the same location. What if you are driving across the country on a road trip? To find out what the weather will be like in a few hours, you need to know where you will be in a few hours. And while you could do all of this manually—guessing at the city where you will be and then looking up the forecast for the hour that you think you will be there—that is a lot of work. The Weather on the Way app does all of this work for you.
I mentioned this app about 18 months ago in an In the News post, noting that I would use the app the next time that my family takes a road trip. Because of COVID and a number of other reasons, my wife and I decided to drive from New Orleans to New York to visit family for Christmas instead of flying, and it was a perfect reason to use this app because of the dramatic change in temperature along the way.
When you start using the app, it works like a map app. Your current location is listed in "A" (change that if you want) and then you place an ending location in "B". The app shows the most direct path from A to B along with the weather at selected locations along the map and the approximate time you will be in each location.
You can tap an icon to choose whether the map shows you the temperature, amount of precipitation, wind speed, or wind gusts at each location.
What if you have multiple stops? That works too. Just enter another stop as "C," "D," etc., and that will be added to your route.
If you want more details about the weather on the way, tap the Show Timeline button.
An icon at the top left of the map lets you update the radar so you can see where the bad weather is located in relation to your route.
If you have flexibility on when you leave, you can use this app to plan the best time/day to leave to get the best weather along the way, up to seven days in advance. Simply tap the departure time just above the map and then a slider appears at the bottom of the screen. Slide to adjust your departure time and you can see what impact that has on the weather at the different locations on the route.
The Weather on the Way app is free to download, and for your first five trips, you get all of the PRO features of the app for free—features like changing the departure time and alternate routes. After that, you pay either $2.99/month or $16.99/year for the PRO features. This generous pricing model makes it easy for you to try out the app for a number of different road trips before paying anything at all. And then when you do want to use the app, you only need to pay $3 for each of the months in which you will be on a road trip, or $17 for a full year if you plan to take lots of trips. You can also pay $39.99 for a lifetime subscription.
I'm very impressed by the Weather on the Way app and I found it useful during my recent road trip. I've tried out lots of different weather apps on my iPhone, but I haven't seen any other app that does with this app does. The next time that you take a road trip, I encourage you to try this one out.
Click here to get Weather on the Way (free): 
