Gibson Ridge Advantages: Radar smoothing, easier inteface to work with, cheaper. Better Level 2 radar (GR2)

GR disadvantages: no storm track built in however there is a download to fix this. no local condidtions reports( unless you pay allisonhouse for them)

Storm Lab Advantages: Easier to add placefiles and shapefiles, Supercharged ( Pro version) can handle both Level 3 and Level 2. Has local conditions as sampling data.

Storm Lab disadvantages: no radar Smoothing, More exspensive. not as easy to work with interface wise as GR.

Personally i own both Storm Lab 4.0 Supercharged and both GR2 and GR3 i prefer GR and i would purchase GR over Storm Lab if your just getting into stormchasing. But with this said both are excellent programs.

GRLevel3 was the Easiest to use Radar Software I have ever tried. I like GRLevel3 and GR2Analyst. GRLevel2 I could not get to work.

Also, Most of us I-S Folk tried or use SWIFT WX Professional. It takes time to figure out, but it is also very nice. I would still recommend GRLevel3 however.

InterWARN and StormLab are pretty good as well. InterWARN offers a Weather-Alert Scroller that use can post on your website.

StormPredator was alright, wasnt the best however.

We used to use SwiftWx but we ran into issues with that. The major issue with SwiftWx is for one, it would broadcast false TVS and MESO signatures. It also took several minutes to download a radar update with our cell card. We're now using Stormlab which I think is a bit better but we haven't been able to figure out how to get TVS and MESO symbols on there. Once we get that going, I think Stormlab is a great system. I just wished they had the radar smoothing

I have both radars. I LOVE them both! I have the GRLevel3 and the StormLab Supercharged radars. Do not buy the GRLevel2 or GR2Analyst because they are very hard to use and I don't even know how to start them up. You'll have none of those problems with the GRLevel3. The GRLevel3 gives me 99% of what I need from a radar. The StormLab Radar gives me 100% of what I need. The one thing I love about the StormLab has that the GRLevel3 doesn't have is to be able to do your own Storm Track. When you do a track and you get a list of locations impacted and the exact time of arrival. With both radars together I get 100%. I would highly recommend both the GRLevel3 and the StormLab Supercharged radars 100% to everyone. With both radars together you get everything you would need in a radar! And together they do an outstanding job!!!!

Also you should get InterWARN it's a nice in-expensive way to get Warnings, Watches, Advisories, Statements as well as forecasts and outlooks from SPC and other great stuff. It goes nice with the two radars! You can get it at the same place you get StormLab. interwarn.com for the two. and grlevelx.com for GR products.

MIDSCAR1 wrote:

We used to use SwiftWx but we ran into issues with that. The major issue with SwiftWx is for one, it would broadcast false TVS and MESO signatures. It also took several minutes to download a radar update with our cell card. We're now using Stormlab which I think is a bit better but we haven't been able to figure out how to get TVS and MESO symbols on there. Once we get that going, I think Stormlab is a great system. I just wished they had the radar smoothing

To get TVS/MESOS on StormLab you have to use the Composite Reflectivity product you all get that plus hail and auto storm tracks too.

For any of you that want smoothing on StormLab I found out a trick. You can make your own Color Tables for any radar product. And I copied the one for the Reflectivity on GRLevel3 on to StormLab and I thought that it came out a lot smoother. It wasn't perfectly smooth but it was better. Try it out.

I use both Gibson Ridge and Swiftwx (Weather Defender). I enjoy using the weather defender at home, but when I'm out chasing or looking at something in paticular I use grl3. I have used stormlab a little bit, but I have become a fond believer in grl3 and for the price I think its one of the best wx radar software available.