My thanks to Weather Up for sponsoring this week at DF. If you’re even a semi-regular reader, you know I’m an aficionado of weather apps. There are a bunch of really good ones — including Apple’s own — but there’s an incredible degree of variety and originality in their information design, style, and priorities. Weather Up is one of my favorites, and ever since version 3 shipped earlier this year, it’s been my primary iPhone weather widget, which, in turn, makes it my most-glanced-at weather app.

Widgets are where Weather Up really shines: informative, glanceable, and intuitively interactive, simultaneously presenting what’s going to happen in the next hour and the forecast for the next few days. Yes, this is my thank-you post for a paid sponsorship, but I absolutely mean this: Weather Up’s widget is the best.

The Weather Up app takes a different approach from the widget, presenting a map-first design. No other weather app (that I’m aware of) goes map-first presentation-wise — which is likely explained by the fact that, as Weather Up developer David Barnard explained on The Talk Show, weather map data is expensive.

In fact, all weather data costs money, and good weather data costs more. Most “free” weather apps are only free at the expense of your privacy. Because you generally grant your weather apps location access — for the obvious purpose of getting local weather info and notifications wherever you go — weather apps are a top category for privacy-invasive advertising.

The developers of Weather Up, on the other hand, are privacy fanatics. Weather Up takes extra steps to protect your data. GPS coordinates are rounded to prevent precise location tracking, data requests go through Weather Up’s servers to hide your IP address, and the app doesn’t collect or share any personal data. A Weather Up subscription normally costs a very reasonable $5/month or $40/year — but with this DF sponsorship link, you can start with a completely free 7-day trial and then pay just $20 for your first year, a 50 percent discount.

If you care about weather apps at all, I implore you to give Weather Up a try. You won’t regret it.