STAYING AHEAD OF THE WEATHER

These phone apps will stop you getting caught out by a cold snap

If you’re determined to stay warm this winter then your smartphone can help you stay one step ahead of the weather: there are now dozens of excellent apps for both Android and iOS that can give you far more information than the TV weather forecaster.

Take Dark Sky, for example (£3 a year on Android, £4 for iOS). It provides detailed weather maps showing how snow or rain might be extending across your locale, and excels at telling you what’s going to happen in the next few hours – so you’re able to configure your heating accordingly.

For weather with attitude, there’s Carrot Weather (free with ads for Android, $5 for iOS). Get this installed on your phone and you get weather predictions that are funny, honest and accurate, cutting through the meteorological data to tell you exactly what you need to know and when.

The free Weather Channel app is of course one of the biggest names in the business, and that shows in the quality and polish of it: you can choose between at-a-glance summaries or more detailed video forecasts, get a heads up on the weather several days in advance, and dig deep into all kinds of detail.

For the real weather enthusiast, take a look at Flowx (free for Android, not yet available on iOS). It gives you a wide choice of beautiful weather maps, showing temperatures, precipitation levels and so on in ways that are simple to understand.

Finally we also like AccuWeather (free for Android and iOS), not least because it won’t cost you anything. Get this app installed on your phone if you want as much detail about meteorological conditions as possible. It’ll even send alerts about bad weather straight to your phone.

With a little extra intelligence provided by a weather app on your phone, you’ll be even better able to coldproof your home this winter – especially if sudden temperature drops or snow storms are on the way.