Windy adds new weather features to Apple Watch app
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Windy is one of our favorite dedicated weather apps thanks to its beautifully animated visualizations of current and forecast weather conditions on an interactive map. Windy is much more than a pretty face though and offers a comprehensive collection of weather products, including airport METARs/TAFs, NOTAMs and radar.
You can even switch between the various forecast models like ECMWF, GFS, NAM and ICON to compare trends and examine each forecast parameter.
What you not know is that Windy also offers a full-featured Apple Watch app which was recently updated with some useful new features. It is one of the best weather apps we’ve seen yet for Apple Watch and makes checking the weather a breeze on your watch.
Airport Weather
Windy for Apple Watch provides quick access to airport METARs. Select the METAR from the main menu and tap the “Around” button to display current conditions for the airports near your present position. You can also set favorite airports for quick access:
Each report includes a toggle to change the display between the raw text and a decoded translation:
There’s also an option to enable a one-time alert from a specific METAR to alert you when there are changes/updates to the report, which might be helpful when waiting for the ceiling or visibility to improve:
Wind Forecast
What would a Windy Watch App be without a dedicated wind page? Tap on the Wind Forecast button from the main menu to display a compass rose with wind flags showing the speed and direction, sourced from the various forecast models used in the app. Rotate the digital crown on the side of the watch to change the forecast from the present time out to 30+ hours in the future.
General Weather
Tap the top Forecast button from the main menu to view a 10-day forecast, broken into 3-hour intervals. You can tap any of the times to view the forecast temperature/dewpoint, wind speed/direction and precipitation.
There is also a radar feed, which can be zoomed in/out using the watch’s digital crown. There’s not much going on in the U.S. today:
Windy Apple Watch Face
Windy takes advantage of one of WatchOS’s custom features and allows you to create a custom Windy weather watch face. Simply tap the Watch Faces button from the main menu, and then “Add Apple Watch Face”, and you’ll see a new infograph modular face available when you swipe through the options on your watch screen (read more about changing watch faces here).
Each of the data points on the Windy watch face are also buttons that take you right to the respective weather function in the app when tapped (forecast, radar or wind). Each of the infographic elements displayed on this screen is also set up as a customizable “complication”, meaning you can add one of these to your other custom watch faces (read more about Apple Watch complications here).
