Free sources of weather information online

This past weekend there was a severe bout of freezing rain which caused difficult driving conditions across the North-East. For nearly all of us unexpected weather can cause major problems and yet despite this we still need to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ because of the time-pressures of modern life. Whilst weather control is beyond our capabilities having access to weather and weather alerts can be a major benefit in helping us plan travel better. A good starting point for data is that used by the US Government and NOAA’s National Weather Service. Use your computer or laptop and visit http://www.weather.gov You can enter your zipcode so the website remembers to get more relevant information. Weather.gov has links to a number of free weather resources at http://www.weather.gov/subscribe TV’s the Weather Channel has a lot of information and can be found at http://www.weather.com Some data is free and other information can be had from a subscription service. Closer to home, New York State provides an alert service which you can use with a mobile phone – visit for more details http://www.nyalert.gov In addition modern cell phones have applications (or ‘apps’) which you can download at no or little cost and draw on the satellite feed from the NOAA.