Magical Weather ($0.99) by Sophiestication Software shows you the day’s weather with a beautiful interface.
Look at the weekly weather forecast for any city you want. In addition to your local weather, you can add eight others. Each city entered will show a thumbnail on the main page, with the current temperature and a picturesque background showing the weather.
The app provides a wealth of information once you select the city’s thumbnail. Weather information, such as the current temperature, the day’s high and low, seven-day forecast, chance of rain, and more are all available. Icons for the seven-day forecast give you a quick idea of what to expect for the week.
All of this is presented against one of sixteen beautiful weather backgrounds. One of the night ones is especially gorgeous, with fluffy dark clouds floating past twinkling stars.
What’s even better is that if you’re not sure what the other symbols next to the measurements mean, a help button on the bottom left of the screen can show you. Tags with lines will highlight what each symbol represents.
A second column of information is available as well, though you can choose to hide it if you’d like. This column shows the day in hourly increments, along with temperature and chance of rain. A red arrow indicates where you are on the timeline.
The settings menu gives you the option of choosing which measurement you would like the temperature and wind speed to show as. By default, it’s set as Fahrenheit and mph.
The interface is beautiful, though overall it feels like it could use some more functionality. Perhaps push notifications would help, especially taking advantage of iOS 5’s Notification Center.
While the weather animations are great to look at, it’s a shame that it goes away when the iPad goes to sleep. Furthermore, I think the main feature I look for in a weather app is a Doppler radar. Seeing the cloud cover puts the current weather into a better perspective for my liking. I would turn to apps like WeatherBug before this one, despite the lack of animated backgrounds.
However, that’s not to say that Magical Weather isn’t useful. It certainly does provide a good snapshot of the weather in a eye-pleasing interface.
