My Experience With Carrot Weather

How many weather applications can the earth sustain? As a weather enthusiast, I’m always looking for new weather-related applications. I already use quite a few, but Carrot Weather, up until now, wasn’t part of my arsenal. However, following the release of version 5.5, I decided to give it a serious try. In summary, it lives up to the hype, but there is certainly room for improvements. Here are my usage observations.

Observations

• If you’re not a subscriber of Carrot Weather, the application offers minimal functionality. Reminders of more advanced features under the subscription is highly visible in every parts of the application. It’s a bit over-the-top. To be able to write this article, I subscribed to the ultra package.
• Carrot Weather’s website offers limited informations about the features that comes with the subscription.
• Without the subscription, there is no way to test a fully featured application. There is no seven-days trial period. Carrot Weather’s website is not very informative or detailed in regards to the application features. It’s hard to judge the application when compared to others in this crowed category.

• The radar view animation is building faster than with MyRadar, but resolution is lower.
• Local radar resolution is lacking compared to MyRadar’s version.
• The animation export as GIF feature is handy and useful.
• Customization is Carrot Weather’s forte, but I do feel that some missing basic things like various weather maps beyond radar, cloud cover, temperature, humidity. those are obvious and of general public interest. But, I’d like having access to more pro weather maps used by professionals.
• Being able to compare previsions from different sources with previsions quality would be a unique feature (when all sources converge to the same prevision, mark the prevision as good, etc.).
• I wish I could see satellite maps without the radar layer.
• While combining the radar layer with satellite map, only the radar layer is updated which is produce uncanny animated sequences. MyRadar suffers from the same flaw, by the way.
• I like the Apple Watch application quite a lot: responsive, informative and comes with many complications. The radar view on the watch is better than MyRadar’s watch version. The iPhone app includes a few watch faces that can be easily installed on the Apple Watch as a mean to quick start the use of Carrot Weather on the watch. Clever.
• I wish I could set the icons style to a more serious / pro looking version.
• Carrot Weather is available on the Mac, but it’s a paid application where features are not on par with the iOS version, which is a shame. Would it be possible to have a Catalyst-version of the application? Or to make the iPad version work on M1 Macs? It’s a matter of willingness to commit development resources.
• Rich notifications are actually rich as in “informative” and well-designed.
• Precipitation predictions are often weird, way too precise, like 2.34 cm of snow. It’s almost impossible to predict with such precision a snow fall. Something like “less than 5 cm of snow” or “< 5 cm” would be more realistic. Maybe it’s part of Carrot Weather general “attitude” or it is dependant of the weather informations source?
• All weather apps are built depending on a few commercially or freely available weather data. Developers have to be creative to set their application apart. Carrot Weather is no different in that respect but its design, snarky attitude and features makes it one of a kind.

Carrot Weather is now on the list of my must-use weather application as documented here “Great Weather Apps for Weather Enthusiasts.” All in all, I’m happy with Carrot Weather. Here is my scorecard:

• Design: 8.5 / 10.
• Feature: 9 / 10.
• Weather Pro features: 6 / 10.
• Value for money: 7 / 10.
• Overall: 8 / 10.