I’m a pretty huge weather geek and the gadgets that are becoming available for Vista are making it possible for me to very effectively keep an eye on the weather on my desktop.  I’ve been trying to do this for years, starting with a custom active desktop in Win98, working up to Konfabulator and Google Gadgets but have never gotten it quite right.  With Vista Sidebar Gadgets, I’ve finally got it.

Here’s what I need/want to see all the time on my desktop:

Current Conditions for home, work, and offices I work with:

• This is enabled by the accuweather mini-forecast, which has a fantastic set of graphics and useful information in a small form factor.  Click on the gadget and out pops a beautiful 5-day forecast.
  

Local Warnings for the area

• I use The Weather Network’s new gadget to keep an eye on local conditions including weather warnings.  Right now it’s the only way to get canadian severe weather alerts on the sidebar, although I’m putting the screws to accuweather to get canadian alerts onto their gadgets as well.  TWN’s is a bit big to use for more than one location, but it has a nice design to it so it’s good as my primary location.  Again, click on it and out pops a more detailed forecast.
  

Radar Imagery from intellicast

• I’ve always preferred intellicast’s radar over all others and luckily the Michigan radars cover southern ontario nicely as well.  Using the Weather Radar gadget I have the local radar loop running in the sidebar, and clicking on the image brings up a flyout of the full-sized radar as well as two other images (I also have the environment canada weather radar and warnings map available).