Radar In Motion is a Dashboard widget that grabs radar images from the Weather Channel and displays the animation.

You can access the radar for a given Zip code or get a regional map.

adar In Motion is a Dashboard Widget to retrieve weather maps from http://www.weather.com and animate them. The widget uses the same sequence of five maps that the Weather Channel's website uses for its "Map in Motion" pages.

The Preferences, accessed by clicking on the white "i" in the upper right-hand corner, allow one to select several options, including:

For a ZIP code, the widget loads the 600-mile map by default. If the entered city has a 300-mile or 100-mile map available, buttons appear on the front for the user to select the radar range. It is also possible to control the animation manually by clicking one of the buttons that appear.

Clicking on the weather channel logo loads the Weather Channel webpage. If the radar being viewed is for a certain region, then the forecast page for that region loads. Double-clicking on the map maximizes it/returns it to the original size.

The widget allows you to remember and rotate through several maps. Select the map in the preferences and click on "Done." If you want to remember the map, click on the "+" in the lower right-hand corner. Any other maps you load and do the same for will be remembered. Use the up and down arrow buttons or arrow keys to move between the maps.

The widget can store maps locally. Note that using this option slows down the loading of maps. Click on the check box next to "Save Maps" in the preferences and input the number of hours you want maps to be stored for.

The maps are placed in ~/Library/Application Support/RadarInMotion. When maps are deleted, they are moved to the trash, as it seems trying to delete them crashes Dashboard. Therefore, you will have to manually remove them from the trash on occasion.

Whenever you reload the widget, the stored maps will be deleted. Note that when the machine is asleep, maps will not be downloaded. Also, if your time between updates is more than the time between maps being changed on weather.com, you will miss some of the maps.

Therefore, it is best to have the widget set to update in the background every 10 or 15 minutes.

Here are some key features of "Radar In Motion":

· Map source: NOAA or Weather.com
· The region of the world for the map to retrieve
· The map within the region to display, including US regional maps by ZIP code or city name. To set a specific ZIP code, make sure "United States" is selected from Region and "Regional Radar (enter city)" is selected from Map.
· How many ms between switching maps
· How to update: Every certain number of minutes in the background and/or whenever Dashboard is activated
· Whether or not to pause on the most recent map for 5x as long as the animation delay
· Whether or not to display a border
· Weather or not to display weather maps for regional radars

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Fixes weather alerts, which have apparently been broken for some time, and also fixes access to National Weather Service maps.