Report updated May 12, 2026
News13 WBTW Weather Radar
For residents and visitors in the Myrtle Beach, Florence, and surrounding South Carolina counties.
News13 WBTW Weather Radar is a well-regarded weather app that is completely free. With a 4.7/5 rating from 3K reviews, it maintains solid user satisfaction. Users particularly appreciate local weather forecasting accuracy provides reliable daily planning for residents in the coastal region, though inaccurate short-term forecasting leads to distrust in the reliability of the weather data provided remains a common concern.
What is News13 WBTW Weather Radar?
News13 WBTW Weather Radar is a localized weather utility for residents of the Myrtle Beach and Florence regions, available on iOS and Android.
Users hire the app for hyper-local broadcast-area weather updates that national apps lack, providing a trusted source for daily planning and severe weather safety.
Current Momentum
v60.1
- Ships bug fixes and performance improvements
- Maintains high-frequency radar usage
Active Nemesis
The Weather Channel - Radar
By The Weather Channel Interactive
Other Rivals
7-Day Rank Pulse 🇺🇸
WeatherNo ranking data
Rating Pulse 🇺🇸
Recent User MoodAI-powered deep analysis surfacing high-signal insights. Still in beta, accuracy improves daily. For informational purposes only.
What makes this app unique?
What Does It Look Like?
How Is The App's Momentum Right Now?
Loading...
What Are The Key Features?
Visual tracking of weather patterns.
Written updates by the StormTracker 13 team.
Upload photos/videos of local weather.
How much does it cost?
- Free access to all weather data and features
The app operates as an ad-supported utility designed to drive traffic to the broadcaster's local news brand.
Who Built It?
LIN Television
Delivering hyper-local news and real-time weather intelligence to regional US communities through established broadcast media brands.
Portfolio
13
Apps
Who is LIN Television?
LIN Television Corporation operates as a digital-first extension of regional broadcast stations, leveraging local newsroom authority to capture high-intent regional traffic. Their primary moat is the integration of live broadcast content and proprietary meteorological data into a standardized mobile framework. The portfolio demonstrates a highly efficient hub-and-spoke development model, where a single technical platform powers dozens of localized brand skins across diverse US markets.
Who is LIN Television for?
- Regional US residents
- Commuters requiring localized breaking news
- Traffic updates
- Severe weather monitoring
Portfolio momentum
The publisher executed 122 releases across 61 apps in the last 6 months, maintaining a 95% active portfolio rate with the most recent major update occurring within the last week.
What other apps does LIN Television make?
What do users think recently?
Low confidence · Latest 62 of 79 total reviews analyzed · Based on 79 reviews. Signal may be noisy.
How did the latest release land?
What is the recent mood?
Recent user voice shows a excited sentiment. Users appreciate local weather forecasting accuracy provides reliable daily planning for residents in the coastal region, but report inaccurate short-term forecasting leads to distrust in the reliability of the weather data provided.
What Users Love
What Frustrates Users
What Users Want
What is the competitive landscape for News13 WBTW Weather Radar?
How's The Weather Market?
Market outlook for this category
Available very soon
The rivals identified
The Nemesis
Head to Head
The target app must double down on its local broadcast identity to differentiate from the broad, data-heavy approach of the market leader.
What sets News13 WBTW Weather Radar apart
Focuses exclusively on local broadcast-area coverage, reducing the cognitive load of national-level data for regional users.
Maintains a tighter, more focused UI that prioritizes immediate local storm tracking over broad global weather trends.
What's The Weather Channel - Radar's Edge
Offers a comprehensive, multi-platform ecosystem that includes advanced video forecasting and deep historical climate data.
Delivers highly personalized push notifications based on precise user location and specific weather event triggers.
Contenders
Prioritizes a high-definition, interactive radar map as the primary interface rather than a text-heavy forecast list.
Includes specialized aviation-grade weather layers that appeal to prosumers and weather enthusiasts requiring high-precision data.
Utilizes a massive proprietary network of neighborhood-level weather sensors to provide more accurate local temperature readings.
Features specialized spark lightning alerts that provide precise distance-to-strike data for enhanced outdoor safety planning.
Features the proprietary 'MinuteCast' technology, providing minute-by-minute precipitation forecasts for specific street addresses.
Offers advanced health-focused indices, such as UV and arthritis forecasts, tailored to specific user demographics.
Peers
Provides a highly polished, minimalist interface that simplifies complex meteorological data for casual daily users.
Includes a unique 'weather photo' community feature that encourages user engagement and real-time visual reporting.
Offers professional-grade, multi-model visualization tools that allow users to compare different global weather forecast data sources.
Provides highly customizable map overlays for wind, waves, and pressure, catering to specialized outdoor sports enthusiasts.
Focuses on simplified, easy-to-read radar overlays that make severe weather tracking accessible to non-technical users.
Features automated severe weather alerts that are highly configurable based on user-defined geographic regions.
New Kids on the Block
Provides hyper-focused, event-driven tracking that becomes the primary utility for users during active hurricane seasons.
Delivers real-time, push-based updates on storm path projections that are more immediate than general-purpose weather apps.
Offers specialized, real-time lightning strike visualization that is significantly more granular than standard weather radar maps.
Uses a high-frequency update model to ensure users receive immediate notifications for nearby electrical storm activity.
The outtake for News13 WBTW Weather Radar
Strengths to defend, gaps to attack
Core Strengths
- Broadcast-integrated local authority drives brand trust
- Community-submitted content loop increases session duration
- Ad-light interface reduces user churn
Critical Frictions
- 4.69 Android rating vs 4.71 iOS rating gap
- Geographic coverage gaps in map view
- Technical freezing during ad-loading
Growth Levers
- Expand map granularity to smaller towns
- Integrate wearable notifications
- Monetize via hyper-local business partnerships
Market Threats
- National weather apps with street-level granularity
- Radar-first competitors like MyRadar
- Technical instability eroding daily utility
What are the next best moves?
Expand map granularity to include smaller towns because users report coverage gaps → increase daily utility
User requests for specific local communities are a top-cited friction point.
Trade-off: Pause the video forecast UI refresh — map coverage has higher retention impact.
Audit ad-loading logic because technical freezing is a top complaint → reduce session churn
Performance issues disrupt the core utility of the app during weather events.
Trade-off: Same-quarter capacity available — no major lever displaced.
A counter-intuitive read
The app's reliance on broadcast-area coverage is a moat, not a weakness, as national apps cannot replicate the local trust and community-submitted content that drives the app's daily utility.
Feature Gaps vs Competitors
- Street-level granularity (available in The Weather Channel)
- Aviation-grade weather layers (available in MyRadar)
Key Takeaways
The app succeeds as a local broadcast utility, but technical instability and map coverage gaps threaten its retention, so the team must prioritize map granularity to defend against radar-first competitors.
Where Is It Heading?
Stable
The regional weather market is consolidating around high-precision radar tools, leaving broadcast-based apps exposed if they fail to provide granular local coverage. The team must address map gaps to maintain the current user base against radar-first entrants.
Technical freezing during ad-loading disrupts the user experience, which directly correlates with the negative sentiment regarding reliability.
High user engagement with the radar feature indicates strong product-market fit for the core local weather utility.