Most RAM hogs on a Windows PC aren’t that difficult to identify. In fact, you can spot most without even opening the Task Manager. These are usually browsers, video editors, games, and most apps that constantly run in the background. A weather app certainly doesn’t fit that profile.

Microsoft’s Weather app begs to differ, though. It can use nearly 1GB of RAM just from checking the forecast.

The Weather app on Windows is a surprising memory hog

1 GB of RAM for checking when it’s going to rain?

Unless your debloating checklist included the Weather app, it’s probably still sitting on your PC. That’s fine, as long as you don’t open it. But if you do, don’t be surprised to see it using nearly 1 GB of RAM. And that’s when you’ve simply opened the app and are scrolling around to check the forecast for the next week. It’s also not some one-time spike that settles down after a while. The Weather app continues to use the same amount of RAM as long as you’re using it to check the forecast or other things.

The higher RAM usage honestly applies to almost all Microsoft apps, but when something as simple as a weather app does it, it’s hard to accept. The reason is simple. The built-in Weather app is essentially a web app dressed up in a Windows shell. That means it’s still running on a Chromium-based engine under the hood, and if you know anything about how Chromium handles memory, you already know where this is going.

Every section of the Weather app runs as an isolated process. If you expand the Weather app entry inside Task Manager, you’ll see a whole list of them, each eating into your RAM. It’s not much different than opening half a dozen tabs inside a browser.

To be fair, the app also shows a lot more than just the weather. There are animated radar maps, live tiles, air quality indexes, pollen counts, and a lot more. All of this is honestly great information for a weather enthusiast, but if that’s not you, you’ll have a hard time justifying why a weather app needs a gigabyte of RAM when all you really want to do is check if it’s going to rain tomorrow.

The RAM usage isn’t its only problem

Oh, and it also serves you ads

If you ignore the RAM usage for a second, there’s actually a lot to like about the Weather app. The UI is clean, the forecast data is detailed, the radar maps are useful, and the app also does a solid job of sending severe weather and precipitation alerts via notifications. But there are a couple of deal breakers that are hard to ignore.

The biggest one is ads. You’ll find them on almost every section of the app. I know ads in an app aren’t exactly shocking, but they do add to the RAM usage. More importantly, you’d expect better from a built-in app, especially when you’ve already paid for the OS. For context, the Weather app on macOS is completely ad-free and also uses way less RAM.

My other complaint is how disjointed the app feels. It’s like each section of the app is a different app with a slightly different design language. The app is fast overall, but it doesn’t exactly feel like one. For instance, the home tab looks different from all the other tabs. Similarly, if you switch to dark mode, the built-in map still shows up in light mode. Of course, these things are not a big deal, but they’re there.

There are better ways to check the weather on a PC

You’ve got options

The best thing about the Windows Weather app is that you’re not stuck with it. You can uninstall it without using any third-party tools or workarounds. This doesn’t kill the weather widget on the taskbar since it’s powered by Start Experience App. You can also open the widgets panel and check the hourly forecast as long as you’re online. The other obvious alternative is to just open a site like AccuWeather in your default browser. You’ll largely get the same information, and you don’t have to worry about RAM usage.

Of course, neither of these is a replacement for an actual weather app. If you want that, there are actually plenty of good ones out there that aren’t as resource intensive as the built-in Weather app. Lively Weather, Weather Wise, and Weather Wonder are all worth trying out. They cover the basics and, most importantly, won’t chew through your PC’s RAM like a game engine.