Gadget Reviews, Product News, Electronic Gadgets

Anyone who’s ever taken a road trip knows there are two chief problems that will crop up that can never be completely planned for: traffic and the weather. Potty-breaks are indeed a factor, but it’s those first two that always manage to cause the most grievances. Now there’s a way to plan ahead for the more natural of the two headaches thanks to Weather Router.

The concept behind Weather Router is a simple one, yet also one that hasn’t really been explored much. Users simply enter in their current location (address, city, etc…) into the first box, input their destination into the second, then let the app do the rest. After a few moments it will generate a small list of weather conditions and temperatures in areas that are presumably along the route between the two locations. It can also check forecasts up to four days ahead with a single tap.

Weather Router is an extremely handy app in that regard. It’s easy to use, easy to read and does pretty much everything automatically. The only input it requires from the user is an address or two. Temperatures are displayed in both Fahrenheit and Celsius (yay!), and conditions each have their own large and easy-to-read icons (i.e. rain clouds, a sun, etc…). Again, for someone planning a road trip this is an absolute boon.

The flip-side to all of this is that it’s somewhat pointless unless someone is indeed planning a trip of some kind. Knowing the weather in one or two locations is handy, sure, but there are prepackaged iOS apps that do the same thing. Another more notable problem is that the app doesn’t really take various travel routes into account. It certainly maps the weather that will be found in the space between two destinations, but as anyone who’s ever been on the highway for 10+ hours knows it’s not always a straight path. I suppose it can be offset by checking the app periodically along the route (Point A to Point B, B to C, etc…), but that seems a bit unwieldy.

It might be a tad specific in its usefulness, but that doesn’t mean Weather Router won’t make anybody’s life a little easier. In fact, assuming those “anybodies” are planning a trip of some sort, it’s usefulness is almost a given. It certainly won’t replace the more routine weather apps for day-to-day inquiries but it’ll undoubtedly shine under the right circumstances.