Thunderly

BECOME AN OMNISCIENT STORM-CHASER Free | www.thunderlyapp.com

SOMETHING CLICKS IN your humble reviewer whenever she reviews an app about nature. Something primal rears its ugly head and, soon, she is obsessively keeping tabs on the weather and predicting how many minutes it will be until the next wall of rain hits. Thunderly taps into this (very peculiar) trait by offering real-time tracking of thunder around the world. The app is very simplistic and beautiful to look at, presenting a photorealistic real-time view of the world with up-to-date information from NASA and other weather contributors. You have a couple of settings to play around with, including switching on/off the aurora and clouds, thunder sound effects, lightning (your phone’s flash will light up when the app detects a strike, which was unexpected but nice), as well as receiving haptic feedback for thunder. You can also tap a button when you hear thunder and, as long as you’ve allowed the app to track your location, it can detect approximately how far away the thunder is from you. While this app is very pretty, if you’re not interested in where lightning might be striking around the world, there really is no point in trying it out. However, for those who are interested, it’s a minimalistic and sleek way to track storms, with no distracting or annoying ads.