Come rain or sunshine, Google has brought a little more visual clarity to its online weather app. With Google Maps you can now instantly see weather conditions on top of the map. Whether you’re traveling across the state, the country or the world, Google Maps will let you know if you need an umbrella, summer dress attire, or snow boots for your final destination.

When you visit the Google Maps page, hover your cursor over the widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps and select the weather layer from the list of options. When zoomed out, you’ll see a map with current weather conditions from weather.com for various locations, with icons to denote sun, clouds, rain and so on.

Tapping on a particular location, such as “Denver Colorado” will provide a pop-up window of the weather forecast for the entire week, with detailed data like current humidity and wind conditions. There are links to get hourly and 10-day forecasts, as well as traffic and transit information.

Also in the left-hand panel, you can change the units of wind speed and temperature and enable or disable the clouds.

The navigation widget is interesting to use, but I find simply searching for a particular location is more precise. You can also click on “My Places” to create and save a map or to review a recent history of your searches. In addition, map information can be printed out, e-mailed, and linked to.

Source: The Official Google Blog