Carrot Weather, the forecast app best known for its funny (and often cheeky) weather updates, has introduced a ChatGPT-based chatbot that allows users to chat directly with the app’s irreverent personality with as much profanity as they can bear. Version 5.10 of Carrot, released worldwide today on iOS, also extends its high-quality radar maps, notifications, and weather alerts to more countries.
You can ask the new Carrot chatbot for weather updates – which it will deliver with the app’s usual incendiary insults – alongside more recreational interactions we’ve come to expect from ChatGPT’s generational AI, such as asking the bot for a text-based based adventure game or write a script for a crime drama. Users who find the chatbot’s responses too hostile can adjust the Carrot AI’s personality to vary how it behaves, with options for helpful, gentle, depressed, angry, drunk, and more.
There are also character-driven modes like Mobster, Cowboy, Pirate and Soviet for a more role-playing experience, and uh, Fake News if you want the bot to completely ignore your questions and spout nonsense. The chatbot provides all Carrot users with five free messages (according to our testing), with more available to purchase through Carrot’s Tip Jar.
The 5.10 update also rolls out push notifications to Premium account members ($4.99 per month or $19.99 per year) for government-issued weather alerts in Canada, Israel, and most of Europe, including support for critical alerts for life-threatening weather conditions and monitoring multiple locations. Lightning alerts are also now available to Premium Ultra subscribers ($9.99 per month or $39.99 per year) in Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean, alerting users to nearby lightning strikes. Specific notifications can be muted by going to the Mute Filters tab in the app’s settings.
Carrot’s radar view, a map that displays forecast layers that track weather conditions such as precipitation, has expanded to Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and most of Europe. Like US users, anyone in these expanded regions can access the app’s Inspector feature (which requires Premium Ultra membership) and the radar color palette can switch between pre-selected themes. The new regions are not currently displayed on the app’s mini-map, Home Screen widget, or Apple Watch, but Carrot developer Brian Mueller has confirmed that The edge that these should be available “within a month or two”.
Finally, Carrot adds support for level 3 products from Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) – a network of 160 advanced weather radars operated by the NOAA National Weather Service – such as total storm accumulation to provide detailed tracking for severe weather across the US. This feature falls under Carrot’s Individual Radar Station Mode for Premium Ultra members, which refreshes the app’s radar view more frequently and displays the radar in higher resolution, giving users more up-to-date and detailed information when monitoring storms.
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