We have found the best weather app for RV travel. It takes the National Weather Service's weather forecast, showing RVers the weather along their route at the time they reach each point.
It allows comparison of different routes, creating stops, interactively changing departure times, and other features that help RVers plan trips around the weather.
You can easily switch between routes, adjust your leave time, and add stops – all so you can find the safest way with the best weather to get to your destination.
Drive Weather is all about decision-making in regard to the weather. Like a pilot before taking off in an airplane and checking the expected weather en route, the app takes just a few seconds to get “briefed” on the safest route and safest time to leave.
We interviewed the developer of this awesome app on Episode 350 of the RV Podcast and we're going to summarize the conversation in this post.
Best weather app for RV travel? The Drive Weather app
The Drive Weather app essentially shows you all the weather at each point of your route when you would get there. It presents the weather very clearly in a way that you can make quick decisions.
The developer of the app spent a lot of time evaluating the weather as it relates to flights. And with aviation weather, there's a lot to look at. And it would take him about 15 to 20 minutes to do a full weather planning before he would fly.
And that's a lot of time. And it wasn't particularly difficult, but it was very tedious and time-consuming, and a lot of mathematics and a lot of opportunities for errors.
But he was a software developer and he saw this opportunity to put all the weather together in one app or one presentation. It basically took that 15-minute process down to literally seconds because he could just look at everything at once. And the app would calculate when he would be at each point in his trip.
So he turned that process in a driving app that tracks the weather.
The way it works is you put in where you are traveling to – then you'll click the – Show Drive Weather button. And it will show you the route and then all these dots along the route.
At the bottom, you have a time slider that allows you to set your departure time or the time that you would leave. And so you could scroll back and forth on that time slider, and it will interactively update the weather.
So this way you can tell if you will be ahead or right in the middle of the weather you are trying to avoid.
This way, you can adjust your schedule to avoid rain, snow, fog, or high winds.
The paid version will allow you to go out in time for seven days, and the free version gives you up to two days of weather.
So you could, if you know you're leaving in a day or two, have a quick scan of what you can expect. And as you get closer and closer to that time, the app updates the forecast. The forecast is being updated every hour. And so you get more and more accurate the closer you are to leaving.
But essentially, you could decide, if you know thunderstorms are coming, you might want to wait a few hours before you leave. Or if you know you have to leave at a certain time, it will tell you that.
The weather information is courtesy of your tax dollars. The National Weather Service is the provider that this app uses. So in a way, it's funded by the U.S. government.
There are gray dots for overcast and blue for clear blue skies. So you can see that easily on the app. And then, if there's going to be any weather, it will show you that icon. For rain or snow or freezing rain. Or fog. For example, I just did a little test. And by using the slider I can see that this coming Monday is a terrible day for driving, but if I can wait until Wednesday, it's clear sailing all the way to Florida.
When I first tried this, I was amazed. It also allows me to see a couple of different routes to my destination and to choose the one that has the best weather.
It's a very handy app. And it's very simple to use. I love to play around with that slider.
So one of the ways that I see this really handy is that I'm doing a 350-mile trip today on a longer route. I want to find a place to stop. And I see that rain is coming into the forecast. I can speed up or stop somewhere else and avoid that. And it just gives me a really nice graphical interface.
What you could do is, in the settings, you could turn off or exclude interstates. So then it would force you to use the other routes. This is again for the pro or paid version. So you can force it. You can force the routing to take a specific path.
We recommend the paid version of this app if safety on the road is something you value. The paid version has no ads, 7 days of weather, night location rendering, wind direction and speed, address-to-address routing, the ability to add stops and delays and the ability to add waypoints.
The Android version is currently $14.99/yr and iOS is $17.99/yr or $5.99/month. Please always check for any updated pricing.
If you want to read more about which apps are best for RVers – check these out:
- 40 Really Helpful Apps for RV Travel
- Ten Apps every RVer needs to have
- All the blog posts for apps we've ever published!
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Now we say that knowing many people are not. Indeed, you need to actually enjoy snow and cold. But we know there are thousands of RVers out there who just need a little coaxing and some tips to get out there and have fun in their RVs year-round.
So that’s why we wrote The Winter RV Camping Guide.
In this 36-page ebook – (NOT a Print book) we’ll walk you through what you need to do before you leave home to get your rig winter-ready, and we’ll cover what to do when setting up camp.
12 Responses to “The Best Weather App for RV Travel – Drive Weather”
Comments are closed.
February 22, 2024at2:40 am, Jeep Diva said:
Love this list! As an RV enthusiast, I can attest to the importance of having a reliable weather app. Drive Weather seems like a great option for tracking weather conditions on the go. Will have to give it a try on our next trip 😊
February 22, 2024at11:07 am, Team RV Lifestyle said:
Thanks for the feedback! Happy Trails! Team RV Lifestyle
January 15, 2024at4:10 pm, Allie Patton said:
The Drive Weather app is fantastic! Thank you so much for sharing the recommendation.
January 15, 2024at9:17 pm, Team RV Lifestyle said:
Thanks for the feedback! Team RV Lifestyle
December 06, 2023at10:41 pm, C Abresch said:
Poor UI and usability in general. Also, the developer gets very obnoxious if questioned or critiqued about the app itself. I installed and deleted almost immediately after watching tutorial, seeing interface and reading reviews of the App on the App Store.
December 07, 2023at3:47 pm, Team RV Lifestyle said:
Sorry to hear that is your experience. Mike and Jen have had only good experiences using it, and when I just looked at the App store rating on my iphone (to see if it had changed), it is still getting 5 stars with 7.7 K ratings so it sounds like Mike and Jen aren’t the only ones who have had a good experience with it. We do appreciate your feedback, though, and will keep this in mind for future updates to this story. Sincerely, Team RV Lifestyle
July 13, 2022at6:15 am, Dangerous Weather While Camping: Staying Safe In Storms | RV Lifestyle said:
[…] is a particularly good travel weather app we use that we really want to recommend. It’s called Drive Weather. It allows the comparison of different routes, creating stops, interactively changing departure […]
June 06, 2021at4:04 am, The Best Weather App For RV Travel In 2021 - 2boomersandababy said:
[…] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:43 — 23.4MB) | Embed […]
April 28, 2021at10:56 am, The Best Weather App for RV Travel in 2021 | theMOMster said:
[…] Continue reading The Best Weather App for RV Travel in 2021 at RV Lifestyle. […]
April 24, 2021at11:11 am, Larry said:
I read your article on the weather app. I went to the Google Play store and added the app and now my phone is all messed up. I don’t recommend adding this app to your phone.
April 21, 2021at6:11 pm, The Best Weather App for RV Travel in 2021 | Book-JC - Tools-JC Blog said:
[…] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:43 — 23.4MB) | Embed […]
April 21, 2021at5:47 pm, Andree clark said:
Just to let know our canadian rvers, the weaher app in not available in canada