I am an amateur (ham) radio operator and lightning is my enemy. My house resembles a porcupine with vertical antennas pointing skywards while long wires are draped from one end of the yard to the other. Thus, I need to know when lightning is around so I can unscrew cables to my array of six antennas feeding four radios, which in turn are connected to my Mac installation.
I have a great iPhone, iPad and Watch app called “My Lightning Tracker Pro” and it works globally, telling you how far lightning is away. You can set up a radius. I have it set for 30 kilometres and it’s alert tone wakes the dead. It’s USD5 to get rid of ads and also works with VisionPro.
But in my radio shack, I wanted a weather radar webpage permanently displayed on a monitor so I could get even greater advanced warning of lightning and hail. I use an awesome weather service called Ventusky as it carries myriad current and predicated conditions globally and it’s graphically awesome.
There was one drawback, however. It didn’t auto-refresh, making it rather useless unless I hit Control R. Enter “Auto Reloader – Page Refresh” – a Safari Extension for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that will refresh a webpage at whatever interval you tell it to. It’s on the App Store and costs only a few bucks. I have mine set to refresh every five minutes (300 seconds). It just works. I now have a full time weather radar running on a Safari page (which I actually made into a WebApp (add to Dock). It now opens on start-up.
There are a few similar extensions on the App Store. I read they’re popular for bidding in auctions, checking the prices of things or waiting in line for concert tickets. But as a weather radar element, it works just fine for me.
12 November 2026