RSS feeds are a fast and efficient way to receive alerts and updates about any topic, including the weather.

In general, there are two categories of RSS weather updates. One will give you weather alerts or warnings for a country or region. The other provides today's weather as well as weather forecasts for a specific area.

Let's look at some of the best weather RSS feeds you can subscribe to today.

1. Yahoo Weather

Yahoo might not be the internet giant that it was a decade ago, but its RSS feed for weather updates is still one of the most reliable around.

Before you can set up the feed, you need to make a note of your desired location's numeric code in the Yahoo database. To find the code, head to the Yahoo Weather website, search for the town or city for which you want alerts, and make a note of the code at the end of the URL in the address bar.

Next, head to your RSS reader and enter the following URL, replacing [location code] with the number you just wrote down:

• https://weather-ydn-yql.media.yahoo.com/forecastrss?woeid=[location code]

Once you've set up the feed, it will update with your selected location's latest conditions whenever you refresh it.

2. AccuWeather

AccuWeather is a well-known website and app for accurate weather forecasts, making its RSS feed worth subscribing to.

The AccuWeather RSS feed is similar to the Yahoo Weather service. You need to grab the location ID number for the place you want to monitor, and then add it to a predefined URL.

A word of warning before you start, however. It appears that the AccuWeather RSS feed only works for US locations. During testing, we tried it on a British and a Mexican location, and both returned errors. All American cities worked seamlessly.

To find the location ID, you need to go to the AccuWeather website, search for the town in question, and make a note of the unique code in the URL (you can find it in the browser's address bar).

Then, copy and paste the following URL into your RSS reader, again replacing the [location code] with the place you want:

• http://rss.accuweather.com/rss/liveweather_rss.asp?locCode=[location code]

The feed will include AccuWeather forecast updates and articles that are relevant to the location you selected.

3. National Weather Service

Rather than focusing on day-to-day weather forecasts, the National Weather Service provides a range of RSS feeds covering a broad number of severe weather alerts and warnings. It is highly US-centric but does provide a few non-US feeds.

Some of the RSS feeds provided on the site include:

• Hurricane and tropical cyclone warnings for the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Eastern Pacific
• Great Lakes Marine Weather Warnings (MWW)
• Severe weather outlooks and watches
• Global tsunami warnings
• Automated Flood Warning Systems (AFWS)
• Daily forecasts of river conditions
• Local storm reports
• Fire weather forecasts
• National Data Buoy Center buoy reports
• Surf reports

You can also subscribe to generic RSS weather news feeds; they include a mix of updates, forecasts, and related content.

To subscribe to the National Weather Service's RSS feeds, go to weather.gov/rss and click on the link you want.

4. rssWeather

The rssWeather service is not as fancy as those from some of the big-name weather companies. However, it's an excellent solution for those who want a simple weather report in their RSS inbox every day.

There is no fiddling around with URL and location codes. Just head to the rssWeather site and use the on-screen menu to navigate to the place for which you want a forecast. You can drill down to a hyper-local level, selecting specific areas within towns and cities.

Once you've clicked through to the place in question, hit the Subscribe to [location] RSS Weather Feed button in the right-hand panel. It will provide the RSS URL that you can then copy and paste into your favorite RSS reader.

Although the entire planet is supported on the site, we found locations in the US to be the most reliable. Elsewhere, the large cities mostly worked, but smaller towns did not appear to be supported.

5. BBC Weather

If you live in the UK and are looking for a weather RSS feed, BBC Weather is the first service you need to check out. It offers hyper-local forecasts for the entire British Isles. Some global forecasts are also available, but they are mostly only available for large cities.

BBC Weather's RSS feeds are available in two forms for each location—there's a three-day forecast RSS feed and a latest observations RSS feed. For a complete overview of the weather in your selected area, you will need to subscribe to both.

Once again, you will need to find the numeric ID code for the location you want to monitor. Run a search for the location on the BBC Weather site and extract the code from the URL.

For the three-day forecast, use this URL:

• https://weather-broker-cdn.api.bbci.co.uk/en/forecast/rss/3day/[location code]

And for the latest observations, use this one:

• https://weather-broker-cdn.api.bbci.co.uk/en/observation/rss/[location code]

In both cases, replace [location code] with the ID tag you extracted from the URL.

6. Reddit Weather

Weather updates don't necessarily mean weather forecasts. If you're an all-round weather geek who loves weather images, news, projections, analysis, and more, you'll probably love the r/weather subreddit.

Like all subreddits on the site, you can easily create your own RSS feed of the weather subreddit by adding .rss to the end of the URL. In the case of r/weather, you need to enter the following URL into your RSS reader:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/weather/.rss

If you live in a hurricane-prone area, we also recommend subscribing to the RSS feed for r/tropicalweather.

7. Met Office UK

We end with another UK option. The Met Office (short for Meteorological Office) is the UK's national weather service.

Most of its feeds revolve around severe weather warnings for the various UK regions. There is a generic nationwide feed, then 16 regional feeds with more localized information. The Met Office also supplies a feed of its own news stories, which all weather fanatics will love.

What About Weather Underground RSS Feeds?

Sadly, Weather Underground's RSS feeds are no longer available. You used to be able to use Weather Underground to grab weather RSS feeds with images, severe weather warnings for your local area, and more. Unfortunately, all feeds went dark between 2017 and 2019.

This means that you'll have to rely on these handy RSS feeds, as well as the huge number of other weather apps and sites to get reliable forecasts.