weather

What would happen if you could take "The A-Team" and "Storm Chasers" and put them together in a blender? You'd get something like Tornado Junkies.

As their name suggests, this trio of young men are crazy about tornadoes. So crazy they think they can build a tornado-proof van.

Yes, this $5,000 Kickstarter project wants your money to build an armor-plated Ford to carry these Des Moines dudes down Tornado Alley chasing twisters. … Read more

Yahoo on Thursday released a Mail app for iOS and Android tablet users and a Weather app for iPhone owners.

A Yahoo Mail app has already been in play for the iPhone and Android smartphones, but the new version takes advantage of the larger screen size of tablets. A full-screen reading mode lets you flip through your e-mail messages as if you were reading a magazine.

Flipping through messages this way feels so much more natural than having to tap on each e-mail in the inbox to read it, especially on a tablet. It's an innovative and welcome approach, … Read more

YoWindow for iPhone is a miniaturized version of the highly-praised Windows counterpart; it's a full-screen weather app complete with animated visualizations of "real time" weather.

The iPhone version comes with five main animated landscapes, each with their own distinctive look and feel. Each animated landscape comes with subtle yet dynamic features that evoke an incredible sense of calm. Stare at a landscape long enough, and you'll notice trees swaying in the background, birds flying off in the distance, airplanes taking off, and more. It's one of those apps that makes your phone a perfect desktop … Read more

Now that winter has passed, those of us who live in cold climes can once again appreciate the beauty of snowflakes without feeling the urge to curse them for making us dig out the shovel. And if ever snowflakes looked lovely, it's in these images shot by a high-speed camera system developed specifically to photograph them in 3D as they fell.

"Until our device, there was no good instrument for automatically photographing the shapes and sizes of snowflakes in free fall," says Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah and one of the developers of the cam known as MASC, or Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera. "We are photographing these snowflakes completely untouched by any device, as they exist naturally in the air."

MASC -- under development for three years -- takes 9- to 37-micron-resolution stereographic photographs of snowflakes from three angles while simultaneously measuring the speed of their fall, a highly influential factor in the location and lifetime of a storm. … Read more

RadarCast is the newest weather app from the people who developed the popular NOAA Hi-Def Radar, but this app brings you future weather predictions along with several other features.

Built for checking the weather around you or at another specific location, RadarCast gives you the latest data from local radar sites using real-time animated weather overlays. There's a lot of room for customization as well. You have the option to look at map, satellite, and hybrid views, and you also can control the weather pattern loop speed, the interval between individual frames, and change the number of frames in … Read more

Earlier this week Forecast.io was announced by the same team behind the iOS weather app Dark Sky. The app would provide alerts based on the immediate weather forecast, allowing you to get inside just moments before the weather would get nasty. With the launch of Forecast.io, the team is able to get the same type of forecasting into the hands of more users since it's a Web based app.

To use the app simply visit Forecast.io using your browser. You can then create a Web shortcut and save it to your mobile device, or a bookmark … Read more

I know not all Mac users take advantage of the OS X Dashboard widgets; some even claim that it's time Apple does away with it altogether. But I use it quite often to track packages, and view current weather conditions through the stock Weather widget.

Getting to the Dashboard isn't always convenient, so adding a menu bar icon to detail the current temp and weather conditions seemed like a good idea when I came across Degrees in the Mac App Store.

The free app doesn't offer much in way of features, but it doesn't need to. … Read more

People often want to check the weather quickly without navigating to a separate Web site. Plus for The Weather Channel for Mac, despite its small price, has a number of features for tracking the weather from the desktop.

Available as a paid app for $1.99, there is no free version for trial. Since Plus for The Weather Channel for Mac is purchased through the Mac App Store, download and installation completed quickly without any user actions. Technical support appears limited to program updates, and there are no formal instructions. The clean interface is easy to use for anyone familiar … Read more

From day one of iOS, users have looked for different ways to hide or get rid of the default Apple apps they will never use. Jailbreak users have been able to accomplish this task through tweaks for years, but users who don't jailbreak have been left with a lone folder tucked away somewhere full of apps that'll never be touched.

For some reason, Apple has approved HiddenApps, and it's currently available in the App Store, as first reported by 9to5Mac. It's unknown how long it will be available, so download it while you can.

Update, 7:… Read more