Google Maps Gets a Weather Layer
Google Maps now features a weather layer. It’s a slightly limited tool, though, and no substitute for a fully featured weather site.
One of the most popular ways to use Google Maps on third-party sites is as a background for weather data. Quite a few of the larger weather sites use Google Maps to provide their users with weather maps and then use a radar or cloud overlay on top of it. Now, however, you can see weather information right in Google Maps itself. Google today launched a new weather layer on Google Maps that displays temperature and cloud for almost every city in the world.
Overall, this is a nice little addition to Google Maps if you want to get a glance at the weather forecast for a place you are travelling to. Before you get too excited, though, it’s worth noting that this layer only displays current weather conditions and clouds, as well as a five-day forecast from Weather.com when you click on one of the weather icons. It does not, however, display any radar data. Because of this, it’s not really a substitute for a full-blown weather site like Weather.com, Accuweather or WeatherUnderground.
Data from Weather.com – Which Uses Bing Maps…
One oddity here is that Google gets most of its data from Weather.com – which uses Bing Maps to display its weather maps.
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About the author
Frederic Lardinois founded SiliconFilter in 2011. Before starting this site, he wrote about 1,500 articles for ReadWriteWeb. His areas of interest are consumer web and mobile apps, as well as Internet-connected devices like cars, smart sensors and toasters.You can reach him at [email protected]
