Bing announces visually rich weather answers and ski resort snow reports

Last month, we reported that Bing team is testing a new weather experience on Bing.com. Bing today made this new experience official. This new experience offers visually rich forecast information. When users search for the weather in a city, Bing will now display an animated experience using real-time forecasts. Users can now view the forecast by the hour using the interactive slider and as they move the slider, the background animation and forecast data update to match the time of day. It looks pretty cool!

For major cities across the world, Bing will be displaying cityscapes in the background that adjust based on the time of day. For other cities, Bing will display a color based gradient that indicates the weather conditions. You can now also type natural language queries such as, “will it rain tomorrow” or “how is the weather this Friday?”.

Another new experience Microsoft is launching today is related to snow reports. Bing now offers the latest snow conditions and snow forecasts for ski resorts in the United States. When a user searches for a ski resort on Bing, they can get the snow surface condition, snow depth, past and predicted snow fall, weather forecast, links to live web cams, when available, and latest status of the lifts and trails in the ski resort.