– Carrot Weather
Tasty forecasts with lots of stick
$4.99 From Grailr LLC, meetcarrot.com/weather Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch Needs iOS 11 or later
You might be familiar with the central conceit of Carrot Weather. It has the usual trappings of a weather app: symbols, outlooks, rainfall predictions, and warnings. But it’s delivered with a side order of snark from an AI pitched somewhere between weather forecaster, HAL 9000, and Skynet.
As ever, the app looks great and packs in lots of information — all while regularly calling you a “meatbag”. But with
recent updates, the app’s received a major boost regarding notifications — at least, if you’re willing to pay. For example, you no longer need an Apple Watch or Mac to be told if it’s going to pour down. Now, a “tier 3” subscriber ($24.99 per year) can have alerts sent directly to their iPhone — assuming they’re in the USA, UK, or southern Canada. US users at that tier also receive notifications for lightning strikes and storm cells.
More widely available, at “tier 2” ($11.99 annually), is the means to tune alerts to data points based on your lifestyle. Using custom thresholds, you define a daily nudge for when specific conditions rise above or fall below a certain threshold. For example, a warning to stay
inside if it’s going to be really cold all day. Genuine critical alerts exist for the US, too, at the lowest subscriber tier ($4.99 annually); and everyone can enjoy the app’s astronomy notifications — handy for those vampires out there who want to avoid the sun.
Beyond Carrot deluging you with updates, there have been other useful changes since we last covered the app. Saved locations can now be renamed, so the app displays something like “home” rather than your town’s name; it’s possible to set daily reports to go out when you want them to, rather than at the top of the hour; and haptic feedback is now an option. Head back a little further in the updates cycle, and one big criticism of Carrot no longer applies — the maps are now much better. What you get still isn’t nearly as pretty nor as fluid as maps in Dark Sky, but in the US in particular you get an inordinate amount of data and layers. Along with the ubiquitous precipitation radar, you can peruse lightning strikes, wind direction, storm cell markers, and more — plenty for even the most ardent weather geek out there. With an adjustable personality, alternate weather sources, a superb Today view widget, and a feature–rich Apple Watch app (with a UV indicator that helpfully asks — in all caps — “Can I sacrifice you to the sun?”) Carrot cements its position as the best weather app on Apple mobile kit. The catch remains the cost for all the bells and whistles. Still, even in its vanilla form, this app’s well worth grabbing — even if there’s a nagging feeling if you annoy Carrot too much, she’ll rustle up a tornado and drop a cow on you while you sleep.
The BOTTOM LINE. This is a feature–rich, beautifully designed weather app that also happens to be a lot of fun.