How good is the weather?! Everyone loves the weather but it will also try to kill you and that’s why it is important to have a reliable source for your weather information. I live in rural and regional Australia so I need an app that just works.

I currently use Pocket Weather – a small but robust iPhone app that tells me everything I need to know at a glance. It does everything: tides, snow, sheep weather alerts (very important) and brown rot warnings (not quite as important). Pocket Weather is my weather forecast right in my pocket and now that I think about it that explains the name doesn’t it.

A message popped up last week on Pocket Weather saying that the developers were making too much money with their other apps and were also no longer willing to pay for the Bureau of Meteorology data so they are killing it. RIP Pocket Weather. The hunt for a new weather app begins.

Why are all my weather apps different? Read more

What should a good weather app have? I have a few fancy requirements.

Firstly it must work on the iPad so the Bureau of Meteorology’s own app is out.

Secondly it must include the Bureau of Meteorology data in its forecasts because Australia.

Thirdly it shouldn’t be run by a climate denialist so that rules out AccuWeather. I shit you not – a climate denier who owns a huge weather forecasting company. It would be funny if we weren’t all going to die.

Some of these apps cost money upfront to get rid of the ads or have monthly subscriptions for extra data and what have you. I don’t mind paying money for a good and reliable app that doesn’t faff about.

Here are the top 10 iOS apps I found (iOS obviously – if you use an Android phone you have much bigger problems because you are using the smartphone equivalent of living in a hole in the road).

It is actually not that great but it does forecast geomagnetic activity ON THE SUN! Who would have thought it and yet here we are. Sunspots right in your app what a world.

Forecasts and dogs – adorable but extremely stupid weather app that has puppies on it. I love it.

Great-looking app – seems to have everything the weather-checking enthusiast needs. It even looks a bit like dear old Pocket Weather which is nice. The only real problem is that everything is in Norwegian. Other than that it’s pretty good (and an English translation of the app is available).

This is one of my favourites because it alerts you that it is going to rain and then it rains. Reasonably accurate and very handy. Some people say they use it for ALL their weather forecasting which is ridiculous because it is not always raining.

This weather app pretends it is a robot and it looks like a game, not a weather app. It talks a lot. It does all the things you need a weather app to do and quite a few you don’t, including time travel and I will be deleting it immediately. It is by massive nerds for massive nerds and not your regular weather app at all but it is jolly fun, imparting messages such as: “Time to do some spring cleaning with the human population. We don’t need anyone over 60.”

This is a very popular weather app and I have been using it for a while – it has all the bells and whistles, things like lightning alerts and daily video weather reports and snow cams in case you were wondering what was happening up at the snow. I just didn’t like where the various things were and they are not configurable also the rain radar is full of neon colours and hurt my eyes. There isn’t really anything wrong with it but it’s not the app I am looking for, it’s not you, Weatherzone, it’s me.

4. Epstein didn’t kill himself

Not an actual app but what if it was? Imagine a weather app for conspiracy theorists with chemtrail forecasts and fluoride levels in the water and the REAL temperature not the greenist climate hoax data the Bureau of Meteorology pumps out. I would totally buy that weather app. Anyway it’s not a conspiracy theory because everyone knows Epstein didn’t kill himself.

This is a great app with highly configurable doovers and a nifty moon chart. I like it. Not sure if I will use it because how many weather apps do you need, but it is the app of choice for many a discerning weather enthusiast.

It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest to Pocket Weather I could find so it will have to do. Does all the standard useful things and looks a bit like when they do the weather on the telly.

This is a beautiful but also terrifying-looking and fiddly app – it has everything you need if you can figure out how to find it. We used it a lot during the bushfires last summer. It is probably the best app going around but buggered if I can get it to work properly.

0. First Dog on the Moon’s Weather App!

Best app ever (does not actually exist). I have always wanted my own weather app. It would have all the good weather stuff like tides and sheep grazing alerts and snow and so on. Also it would have First Dog on the Moon app-only content that you couldn’t see unless you had the app and there would be a different cartoon depending on what the weather forecast was going to be.

• First Dog on the Moon is Australia’s only Walkley award-winning marsupial-based cartoonist and has done all sorts of things including books, radio, stage shows and a lot of lying down

• This article was amended on 7 November 2019, as Yr is a Norwegian (not Danish) weather app, and an English translation of the app is available