Windows Phones have the ability to allow users to stay in touch with the world through email, social networking and the internet. One aspect of staying in touch that many rely on their Windows Phone for is keeping tabs on the weather.
ISC is offering Rad Now, a free weather radar application that is simple, straightforward, and is a good way to keep track of weather conditions.
Feeding of local radar imagery, Rad Now offers a composite national weather radar view. You can adjust the opacity of the radar reflectivity, animate the radar and center the radar based on your current location.
You can pinch-to-zoom on the map to get in closer and toggle between a road map view and a hybrid view (satellite/road view). Animation can be set to 15 minute or 5 minute frame rates.
In using Rad Now, there seemed to be more contrast between the map and radar image with the hybrid to make it easier to view. The downside with the hybrid is that the roads weren't as easy to pick up. While I don't mind the basic settings Rad Now offers, I would have liked to seen more forecast tools present. A radar summary image for example to show where systems are heading, their elevation, and speed.
Image re-draw rates were very respectable and capable of taking you into neighborhoods to pinpoint the weather activity. While the GPS lock centers the radar image to your location, it would have been nice to have a street or location search tool.
While there's more that could be added to Rad Now, for a basic radar application it performs well. I didn't experience any bugs, glitches or failures while testing the app out. Compared to other radar services through Weatherbug or the Weather Channel, Rad Now's radar was quicker to load and you didn't have to drill down to see the radar image. Granted with other apps you have more weather information to feed off of but if all you need is a radar image, Rad Now will do nicely.
Rad Now is available at the Marketplace and you can find your free copy here (opens your Zune Desktop).
