The others have the ability to store the view data in a cookie, but my cookies are deleted repeatedly throughout the day, and I don’t like making exceptions, particularly when the site in question also carries ads, as all of them other than NWS do. And on top of that, it’s deliberately designed so that the URL changes with each modification the user makes to the map, so that one need only bookmark it to return to that same view anytime. It allows using the WSR-88D (Weather Service Radar, 1988, Doppler) or TDWR (Terminal Doppler Weather Radar), in higher resolution than I’ve seen from a free site before, and with the full complement of radar products available, including storm relative Doppler and dual-pol. Unlike Weather Underground’s Wundermap, there’s no annoying ad taking up vertical space (on a 16:9 display that’s already on the short side vertically), and it’s much easier on the underpowered CPU in the Swift. I got a note from the local NWS office (spotter network) to go have a look at the new site that’s going to be rolled out officially in about a week, so I did… and it’s fantastic.

It would work, but scrolling or zooming was very laggy and choppy, and I often overshot the target and zoomed or scrolled more than intended. The problem I had with all of those sites (Intellicast had the best of the lot for this) was that my slow Swift laptop had trouble with those relatively heavyweight pages. For a really long time, the NWS (US National Weather Service) weather radar data available on the official site has been antiquated and much inferior to that offered by third-party sources, like Weather Underground, The Weather Channel, and Intellicast (though that one is no more), which are all now part of the same company, at least as far as the web sites go.