WunderMap does offer richer content, including radar overlays, webcams, dedicated services for hurricanes, fires and tornadoes, and more. It’s not nice to call Web services dead before they actually go offline, but Weather Underground’s WunderMap service is in a pickle now. Google Maps has no radar view or interactive components, so The Weather Channel still has something unique to offer on its own site, but whenever Google gets into a new vertical, be it weather, shopping or email, competitors should proceed with caution. The Weather Channel used to offer a Google Maps mapplet, but that’s unnecessary now. Naval Research Lab, which also provides some of the data for Google Earth’s “Clouds” layer (look at the bottom left of the screenshots). The data come from, although Google’s blog post mistakenly says it’s all from the U.S. But the addition of this layer to Maps means that users planning an outing or a trip can do it all from one free, Google-powered, ad-supported place.

Google is not new to the weather game Google Earth has been displaying weather information since 2007, adding real-time weather and animations last year. It’s a simple overlay of local weather icons with temperatures, and clicking them pops up more information including humidity, wind speed and a forecast. Google just introduced a weather layer to Google Maps, and WunderMap better watch out.

Google wundermap