This afternoon was another stormy one in central Iowa and I decided to refresh my memory as to which websites offered the best radar and weather coverage.  For the past couple of years, I’ve pretty much gone to KCCI.com anytime I needed to check the radar.  In fact, I have a shortcut to their statewide loop in my favorites on every computer I own, at work and at home.

I started with a site I thought would give KCCI a good run for their money in terms of radar….WHO TV.  When I read the following notice on their weather page, it appeared that I was going to be right.

“Iowa’s most powerful television radar is patroling the skies over Iowa. First Alert Mega Doppler, with one million watts, is the most powerful radar available to the broadcast market. It is 142 times more powerful than our last radar and three times more powerful than KCCI’s.”

The first thing I really noticed was that the size of WHO’s radar screen was about 1/3 the size of KCCI’s.  In addition, WHO didn’t seem to show as much detail in terms of light versus heavy rain areas.  Finally, I couldn’t find a way to see a radar loop on WHO, whereas KCCI offers several radar loop options and many more weather maps in general.  While it may be true the WHO’s radar is 3 times more powerful than KCCI’s, it’s not the case on their website.

The next site I decided to check was that of local ABC channel 5.  I didn’t know the web address, since I never really go there for local news…so I did a Google search for WOI Des Moines and found it to be http://www.woi-tv.com/.  I also noticed that http://www.woitv.com/ seems to work, as does http://www.myabc5.com/.  (This station really needs to focus on using only one URL, as they really have the search engines wondering which one to use…but that’s another post.)  Anyway, the radar on this site is not good.  My web enabled cell phone has better radar, and once again…no loop.  Even WHOtv has this one beat.

The final local weather radar I checked for Des Moines was on KDSM.  From what I could tell, it appears that Fox has simply grabbed radar from the National Weather Service and framed it on their page.  In doing so, their radar has some decent functionality, although I still prefer KCCI’s.  I my opinion, if WOI TV would do this…it would be far better than what they are currently offering, and a few people might be impressed.

Two other weather radar sites deserve a mention here as well, and I’m betting there are others I have yet to find.  First, Accuweather is worth a try, and Google ranks them #1 for the search phrase Weather Radar.  Their national radar map makes it easy to click and zoom into a region, then to a state, and finally to a portion of the state…in this case central Iowa.  They also have a nice radar loop.  This is the same service I use on my Sprint, web-enabled mobile phone.

Lastly, the Weather Channel has some great weather maps with a lot of added functionality.  It appears they’ve partnered with Microsoft Virtual Earth, so you can zoom in to street level views which can then be overlayed with the current radar, a radar loop, or a frame by frame radar.  I was impressed, and while I couldn’t zoom in as far as I can using Google earth…I could still see my house.  On the downside, it took quite a few clicks to get to all this added functionality…and when I want to check the radar, I don’t usually spend 10 minutes doing so.

 Summary…when the weather is threatening in central Iowa, and you want to check the radar online, here are some good options in the order I would recommend.

1.  KCCI Statewide Loop
2.  KCCI Metro Loop
3.  The Weather Channel - Iowa
4.  Accuweather - Central Iowa Loop
5.  National Weather Service - Iowa Radar (same as KDSM)
6.  WHO TV Statewide Radar View
7.  WOI TV Iowa Radar

Anyone know of a good site to check Iowa road conditions, in real-time?  Maybe someday these two technologies will work together…

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