MyRadar Weather Radar – a great app for pilots

Many of the full-featured flight planning apps like ForeFlight and WingX provide excellent resources to help during your preflight weather planning. They provide a full complement of FAA text weather products and graphical imagery – some of which can be displayed right on top of your digital sectionals and IFR en route charts. During thunderstorm season you’ll be focusing more on the radar images to help determine precipitation intensity, movement and  thunderstorm development. While WingX and ForeFlight provide this radar imagery, you may find it helpful to compare other radar sources when analyzing afternoon thunderstorms or an approaching cold front.

A free app called MyRadar does just that, providing a simple interface with fast-loading radar images. MyRadar displays the gradients and intensity contours very accurately — helpful when analyzing cell movement and development. You’ll also find basic settings to control the radar animation speed, map settings and other overlays. This is a universal app, so it will work on both your iPhone and iPad. You’ll also see a “Pro” version in the app stored that sells for $1.99; the only difference between this and the free one is that it removes the advertisements.

What other weather aviation apps are you using during preflight?