I live in the Midwest, or more specifically, in Des Moines, Iowa. The city and area can get its fair share of severe weather, but it is an overall interesting place to view Mother Nature.
We do get all four seasons over here, especially when it comes to snow.
Over the past two years or so that I have lived here, I have always wanted to be ahead of the storm and have the best information at my fingertips.
Thankfully, technology and software has gotten to the point where I can do this on my most frequented Apple devices like the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.
So how do I do it all?
For starters, I make sure that I have the best weather app around. Apple’s default Weather app is not too bad now ever since the company acquired Dark Sky in 2020 and implemented a lot of its features into the default Weather app, and then expanded it to the iPad in iPadOS 16 last year.
But still, I prefer to use apps like CARROT Weather since I have found it to be more accurate that the default Weather app and weather apps that belong to national and local weather media outlets. CARROT will not only alert me when I am under a severe thunderstorm warning or tornado warning, but also thanks to it being set to constantly know my location, it can tell me whether or not I’m in the area that’s being impacted by the severe weather.
That is highly important when it comes to alerts like tornado warnings. Most weather apps will alert you when it’s in your county and tell you to take shelter but will not tell you if you are personally being impacted by it.
Weather apps can do so much and can be curated in a way so it is more personal for you. They are not everything, though.
The next way that I use to pay attention to the weather, more so when it is highly severe, is through the streaming service Paramount+. The service enables users on its ad-free tier for $9.99 a month to stream their local CBS station. When those local stations do on-air coverage of severe weather, you can stream it live on Paramount+ and do it all from an iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.
KCCI is the CBS affiliate in Des Moines and does great coverage of severe weather when the meteorologists are on-air and providing in-depth coverage, so being able to stream them live via Paramount+ is a great bonus of the streaming service.
I watch the channel through Paramount+ because my apartment does not have good coverage of local towers in the area, therefore, streaming it is the best way to do so.
If CBS and Paramount+ are not for you, Peacock just added the ability to stream your local NBC station live through its ad-free tier of Peacock Premium Plus, so that might be another option for you too. It’s the same price as the ad-free version of Paramount+ at $9.99 a month.
Of course, there’s always the option to stream your local TV stations for weather coverage through live TV streaming services like YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV.
What’s your plan for keeping track of weather in 2023? Comment below or let us know on Twitter at @appleosophy.
