Clime: NOAA Weather Radar Live

Review by eFreeware

If you follow weather as it moves rather than checking a number once in the morning, Clime is the sort of app that fits. It is built around radar imagery, animated loops and alerts tied to places you save, so the people most likely to want it are those who plan around incoming rain, snow or storms: someone deciding whether to leave the car out overnight, a gardener watching a dry spell, a household tracking a hurricane as it approaches the coast.

What you get is a radar map showing detected rain, snow and mixed precipitation, plus a loop of the last 40 minutes up to the current moment. Forecasts, current conditions and a satellite view sit alongside it. The developer frames the whole thing as an all-in-one weather tracker, and the range of what is included does back that up.

It is free to install, with ads and in-app purchases, and a Pro tier adds a fairly long list of extras. More than 10 million installs and a 4.2 average across over 430,000 ratings suggest a large, mostly satisfied audience, though the split between what the free version covers and what Pro adds is the main thing to weigh before you commit.

Watching precipitation move across the map

The radar is the center of the app. You see detected areas of rain, snow and mixed precipitation, and the animated loop runs from 40 minutes back to now, which is the window you need to judge whether a band is heading toward you or sliding past. The developer describes this as real-time NOAA radar data for the US.

There is more control here than many weather apps offer. Settings let you change overlays, set radar opacity, pick a loop speed and choose a background map. That matters if you like a particular balance between seeing the underlying geography and seeing the weather on top of it.

Coverage is broad but not uniform. Radar images cover the continental US, Alaska with the exception of the north, Hawaii, the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico, plus northern Mexico, southern Canada, Australia, many European countries and Japan. The full country list sits on the developer's website, which is worth checking if you are outside the US.

For a quick read on the day ahead, there is a 24-hour precipitation forecast and a satellite view of cloud cover. Neither replaces the radar loop, but together they answer the two questions most people actually have: is anything coming, and is it already overhead.

Alerts, bookmarks and the storm side of the app

You can bookmark several locations and move between them, which turns the app into something closer to a small dashboard than a single-city widget. Push notifications and alerts follow those bookmarked places, covering tornadoes, hurricanes, freeze warnings and storm alerts among others.

The storm tracking goes further than a notification. National Weather Service watches, warnings and alerts appear as interactive polygons on the map, so you can see the shape of the area affected rather than just reading a county name. That is a genuinely useful layer during severe weather, and the developer pitches the app as a tornado tracker as well.

Two limits are worth keeping in mind. NWS watches and warnings apply to the US only. Governmental weather warnings are available in a specific set of countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. If you live elsewhere, the radar and forecast layers still apply, but the official warning polygons do not.

Hurricane, wildfire and lightning trackers work in most of the world, which widens the app's reach beyond the warning-polygon countries. For anyone in a hurricane zone, that seasonal tracking is likely the feature that decides whether the app earns a place on the home screen.

The everyday forecast screen

Away from the map, Clime handles the routine weather questions. You get today's conditions and a 7-day local forecast, with current temperature, today's minimum and maximum, and a feels-like reading. Pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, visibility, dew point, chance of precipitation, and sunrise and sunset times round out the detail.

That is a conventional set, and it is presented as part of the same app rather than as a separate mode. The advantage is that you are not switching between a radar tool and a forecast tool; the same bookmarked locations carry across both. For most people, that consolidation is the practical argument for using Clime over a plain forecast app.

The free version covers this ground. The Pro tier adds a longer horizon: a 14-day hourly forecast, a 72-hour precipitation forecast map, a temperature forecast map and snow depth forecast. Those are extensions of what is already here rather than different tools, so the question is whether you need the extra reach.

What Pro adds, and what it costs you

The app is free to download and carries ads. In-app purchases are offered, and a subscription renews automatically through your Google Play account unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Payment is charged at confirmation of purchase, and any unused part of a free trial is forfeited if you take out a premium subscription during that trial. The renewal cost depends on the plan you pick, and subscriptions can be managed in your account settings.

The Pro list is long: alerts for all saved locations, a hurricane and tropical storm tracker, a 72-hour precipitation forecast map, a lightning tracker, a temperature forecast map, rain alerts, fires and hotspots, RainScope, a 14-day hourly forecast, snow depth forecast, pollen data, and no ads. Several of these are the kind of thing you might only want during a specific season, which makes the subscription decision more about timing than about the app itself.

NOAA supplies the radar data, and the developer describes the app as a full weather station for your phone. The underlying radar imagery is the substance here, and the coverage list is the honest measure of how useful it will be where you live.

The most recent update, in October 2025, was described simply as bug fixes and performance improvements. The app has been on Google Play since May 2016, so this is a long-running product rather than a recent arrival.

Setting it up and what it asks of you

You install it, and the work of making it useful is mostly in choosing the locations you want to follow and bookmarking them, since alerts and notifications are tied to those saved places. If you only ever look at one city, you will get less out of the alerting side than someone tracking several.

There is a small amount of tuning available for the radar view itself: overlay choice, image opacity, loop speed and background map. None of it is required, but it is the difference between a map that reads clearly for you and one that does not. A full country list for radar coverage is available on the developer's website, which is the first thing to check if you are outside the US.

Because the app relies on radar and forecast data, the parts that matter most are the ones that update. What you get on the map is only as current as the last update.

Weather watchers, planners and travelers

Clime suits people who think about weather in terms of movement and timing. If you want to know whether the rain will reach you before you finish a walk, whether a storm band is strengthening as it approaches, or whether a hurricane is tracking toward a coastline you care about, the radar loop and the alert polygons are the features that earn their place.

It also suits anyone who keeps an eye on more than one place. Bookmarked locations with alerts attached turn the app into a way of watching a second home, a relative's town or a route you travel regularly. That is the scenario where the free version's alerting is most obviously useful.

The US is where the app is most complete, given the NOAA radar data and the NWS warning polygons. Outside the US, coverage varies by country and layer, and the official warning polygons apply only in the listed nations. Someone in a country with radar coverage but no governmental warnings still gets the animated radar, forecasts and the global trackers, just not the full alert picture.

The Pro tier is aimed at people who want the longer forecasts, the extra trackers and an ad-free experience. If your interest is the radar map and the basic forecast, the free version carries those. If you want pollen counts through allergy season, lightning tracking during summer storms or the 72-hour precipitation map, that is where the subscription starts to make sense.

A radar-first app for people who watch the sky

Clime is worth installing if you want radar imagery at the center of your weather app rather than tucked away behind a menu. The animated 40-minute loop, the overlay and opacity controls, the 24-hour precipitation forecast and the alert polygons for saved locations form a coherent set of tools for tracking what is coming.

Ads are present, Pro features sit behind a subscription that renews automatically, radar coverage varies by region, and the official warning polygons are limited to the US and a specific list of other countries. None of that is hidden, but it does shape where the app works best.

For a US-based user who follows storms and wants alerts for several places, this is a strong fit. For someone elsewhere, the value depends on whether their country appears in the radar and warning lists. Either way, the free version gives you enough to judge whether the map-first approach is how you want to check the weather.

What's new in version 1.72.7

Bug fixes and performance improvements.