Little League Baseball and Softball recently introduced a new mobile application featuring an array of weather prediction features meant to help coaches, parents, managers and family with their planning.

The Little League WeatherBug app was developed in partnership with WeatherBug and includes a tool called Spark, which gives personalized lighting strike information in real-time and leverages GPS location data from mobile devices. It is the latest in a growing list of apps from Little League Baseball and Softball that also includes a rule book app with FunMobility and a scorekeeping app with GameChanger.
 
?Our customer mantra at WeatherBug is Know Before since our app provides unique features like lightning detection with Spark, early warnings to severe weather such as thunderstorms, and access to real-time neighborhood level weather and forecasts,? said Amena Ali, the chief marketing officer at Earth Networks, Germantown, PA.
 
?That?s a natural fit with Little League and their focus on helping keep players, fans and officials safer,? Ms. Ali said.
 
Severe weather alerts
 
One key feature of the app is faster severe weather alerts in the form of National Weather Service (NWS) updates,  and Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts. According to WeatherBug, its thunderstorm alerts are on average 50 percent faster than competing apps.

The Little League WeatherBug app
 
Additionally, the app uses WeatherBug's local weather stations that are located in places such as stadiums and schools, along with NWS stations, to provide new data.
 
The app is free to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
 
?The Little League is always looking for mobile solutions to help local leagues?,  Brian McClintock said, director of media relations for Little League, who also noted the importance of staying up with current technology. 

Track location specific weather changes
 
Other Little League apps include Little League Card Maker, which allows users to create and distribute their own trading cards, and iScoreTower, which allows for converting iPads into scoreboards that can then be controlled with other iOS-powered devices.
 
Tightly integrated experiences
 
The WeatherBug partnership app is the latest of several developments for weather apps as they explore more tightly integrated experiences on mobile (see story). 
 
For example, AccuWeather will be pre-installed on the newly launched HTC One.
 
Additionally, free music streaming and recommendation service Songza is integrating weather data through collaboration with The Weather Channel, so it can recognize weather patterns in a user?s area and suggests music choices based off the perceived state of mind. 
 
?By partnering with Little League, we hope that more mobile users will discover and benefit from everything WeatherBug offers ? from Spark to weather and traffic cams,? Ms. Ali said. 

View live weather and traffic cam feeds
 
?We debuted the app during the Little League World Congress last week, and District Administrators, umpires, coaches and team managers were excited to have the power of our app at their fingertips,? she said. 

The Little League WeatherBug app makes game time simple
 
?The app is ad-supported, which makes it possible for us to provide it at no cost.?

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