Some say that when you have a government-owned entity in any field, it will tend to be more serious and straightforward. While I believe there are examples and exceptions in that belief, the National Weather Service is an example. Their website is ad-free, fluff-free, serious weather data and information.
The National Weather Service is the official weather analysis and observation organization of the United States Federal Government, and is the backbone/provider for most of the weather data that the other websites use (like radar, forecasts, current conditions [for non-PWS websites], warnings, and more). There is the national office with many departments around the nation as well as local offices for each region of the United States. What you want to do is find your local office and go to their site for local information, using the national site for national analysis and maps. If you’re seeking no-frills maps of the nation to use for making personal forecasts and doing amateur analysis, then the NWS site is where you want to go. It’s a bit hard to navigate because of the sheer amount of data available and confusing site design, but it’s worth it.
Your local NWS site is a great place to have in your weather website bookmarks. Many offices, like my local office for the Dallas/Fort Worth area in Texas here, offer ‘graphicasts’ that tell you about weather coming your way that you’ll only see on the NWS site, like this one forecasting thunderstorms tomorrow for North Texas:
Graphicasts can be quite useful, as you can see. You can also get forecasts for your local area, often for your neighborhood specifically, by clicking close to where you are on the clickable maps on the local office homepages. Weather warnings, watches, advisories, and outlooks are there, too, of course, but the other weather sites do a good job of displaying them as well (especially the Weather Underground).
There is also a feature called “Graphical Forecasts” (not to be confused with the graphicasts) where you can look at maps of the U.S as well as zoomed-in regions that are basically forecast maps showing everything from precipitation outlooks, to temperature forecasts, and even humidity and wave height. This is a very neat feature as well.
The NWS radars are basic and not that exciting – just the data on a map of your local area, region, or the nation. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no interactive map or anything, though there is one in proposal at the moment which I’ll discuss when it comes out this October or so. Looks like it’ll be on par with that of the Weather Channel at best right now. Other maps are the same way.
Every NWS site has miscellaneous information (like local climate data) and region-specific stuff that is too numerous to list and review here, so I’ll just say to check out your local site as well as the national site and see what they have to offer. The strong points overall would be the graphicasts and local forecasts, as well as the weather maps, forecast maps, and the clean site. Overall, the NWS is a good site to have in your bookmarks. Next up, Accuweather! Then, after that, look for a summary of the weather sites and perhaps a few honorable mentions.
Overall Grade: B+
Misfit Manor 