It’s always sunny with TDS TV

A while back, I talked about features that can make your life a little easier. TDS TV has rolled out another nice little feature that is certain to make your daily routine just a tad less hectic: an advanced interactive local weather application

When you’re getting ready in the morning, there is one issue that you seem to always need to plan your day around: good old Mother Nature. If you get up early, you might try to flip on the 6 a.m. news in hopes of catching the weather for the day. Sometimes, people even go as far as to plan their alarm clock around when the local weather celebrity takes the air.

Now with TDS TV, a channel is offered that’s nothing but your local weather. No frills, no ads, just honest-to-goodness information. I used to use the Internet news sites as my local weather source, it seems that sometimes I would have to navigate through 15 minutes of commercials and pop-ups just to see if it’s going to rain today—such a waste of time.

Being a Middleton, Wis. customer, I flip to channel 1219 in high definition (219 in standard def), and it tells me what I’m in for during the day. The first time you surf to that channel, you open up the settings, select your city, and you’re all set from there.

Once you’re all squared away, you can check the current weather in your area. It’ll tell you temperature, status of sunlight or cloudiness—then the super science-y stuff like humidity, visibility, wind speed and direction, wind chill, and then pressure. You can click to the Next tab and it’ll show you the forecast as well. This screen will show a quick and easy to read 5 day forecast.

Probably the neatest part of the new feature is the interactive radar. This is nice because sometimes I’m aware that rain is afoot, but I’m not sure when. Since I now have the access to the radar (local, regional, and national), it’s easier to understand just how close the storms are, and when I need to be home by to beat them.

There is even an alert if there is severe weather in your area. If you go to the local weather channel and there’s an alert for your area, you can click the button and read the details about it. Since we’re approaching tornado season, that’s a great service we can all use.

I’ve found myself flipping to local weather channel quite a few times already. I’m not usually the type of person that frets too much about the temperature and if we’re in for some sprinkles, but when my local weather is at my fingertips, it’s too good to pass up.

—Austin