App Review: Hurricane Tracking for the iPhone

(Hurricane for iPhone Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

Hurricane [$3.99 - iTunes link] is a hurricane tracking app for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Back when I lived in Florida, hurricanes were a yearly concern. Now that I am in Texas, they don’t play such a prominent role but they are still something to think about. Hurricane is an app designed to try to take away some of that concern.

I have actually had this app for well over 4 months, but I wanted to wait till the middle of hurricane season so I could see it in action. And let me say, the app generally performs very well. The app starts off with a screen where you can select Atlantic or Pacific hurricanes, and then gives you a list of the active storms as well as completed storms. When you click on a storm, you can look at the radar loop, projected path, tracking map, satellite images, and bulletins. All of this allows you to try to keep on top of these potentially devastating storms.

In addition, you can look a historical storms (from last year going back to 1851) and specific data feeds (like satellite images) from a variety of sources. For people with little hurricane experience, you can also see how hurricanes are rated on the Saffir-Simpson scale. While it certainly isn’t necessary, it would be nice to have some sort of hurricane checklist included (what to do, or not do, when one hits, for example).

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t provide any customization options. You can specify your location and only look at storms that may hit you. You can’t mark a storm as a “favorite” to keep close tabs on it. You don’t get push notifications when a storm status changes (or a new alert is released). These are all kinds of features that would put this app into an elite category. In addition, there is no ability to sort or search the historical data. I can’t look for all historical Cat 5 storms that have him Florida, for example. If I am curious about how frequently a specific area has been hit, I can’t only include storm that hit Texas. The historical data is nice, but in the present form it is a little unwieldy unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

As hurricane tracking apps go, this is a nicely designed app, giving you a lot of the pertinent and critical information. If you live in a hurricane prone area, it could certainly be worth the $3.99 price. However, the app is missing some features that would move it into a premium app category (which, I should note, I haven’t seen in other hurricane apps as well).

(In the interest of full disclosure, I received a promo code for this app.)

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App Review: Hurricane Tracking for the iPhone