Vietnamese people rush to download weather tracking apps as storm Wipha makes landfall

Windy, the most downloaded weather and storm tracking application on the App Store, was the moment storm Wipha approached Vietnam's mainland.

Windy app tops the App Store charts in Vietnam.

Windy became the most downloaded free app on the Vietnamese App Store (both iPhone and iPad) on July 21-22. This app also entered the top 10 most popular on the Google Play Store.

Currently, many people download Windy to track the path and predict the movement of Wipha, the storm that approached Vietnam's mainland on the morning of July 22.

According to data from research firm Sensor Tower , Windy has risen 389 places from July 5, ranking 58th in the list of popular free apps on the App Store in Vietnam on July 18, when the low pressure area in the East of the Philippines was upgraded to a storm by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and named Wipha.

By July 19, Windy had risen to fourth place. This was when Wipha’s intensity increased. As the storm made landfall in parts of China, the Philippines, and approached Vietnam, Windy became the most downloaded free app.

On Google Trends, searches for keywords such as “windy” and “windy application” also skyrocketed from July 19, reaching their peak in the early morning of July 22.

Windy's popularity has skyrocketed since the storm information surfaced. Photo: Sensor Tower .

Windy is an online mapping platform developed by a team of programmers in the Czech Republic. The platform's data is synthesized from leading meteorological models such as ECMWF, GFS, ICON, JMA, and especially supports real-time satellite images.

Windy combines many powerful forecasting models (ECMWF, GFS…), updated regularly every 6-12 hours. Thereby, people can use the app for reference purposes.

When opening Windy, the application will determine the user's location with the default option of displaying wind speed. The app supports moving on the screen to display wind speed in the areas, holding lightly to display the exact longitude and latitude of the location.

Windy supports multiple views such as wind direction and strength, precipitation, temperature, clouds and air quality. Users can view future forecasts for weather information for each location in the following days. The application is based on the open source map of OpenStreetMap.

The free version of Windy offers most of the important features, users can pay to get advanced forecasts. The application is well-rated for its simple interface, available in Vietnamese, but needs to be familiar with the features to read the map.

In addition to the Windy app, users can track the storm's path directly through the Vietnam Natural Disaster Monitoring System (VNDMS). The system has two versions, the web and the VNDMS app, supporting both Android and iOS.

Source: https://znews.vn/ung-dung-theo-doi-bao-wipha-dung-dau-danh-sach-tai-tren-iphone-post1570661.html