Google announced the addition of a weather layer to Google Maps, where users can see current temperatures and conditions anywhere on Google Maps.

Google thinks this may help make travel easier. It can’t hurt to see the weather as you’re planning the route you’re about to journey upon.

Users will see “weather” added to the list in the widget in the right hand corner of Google Maps (with traffic, photos, etc.). When selected, you’ll not only see weather info on the map itself, but in the left panel, you’ll see current temps from The Weather Channel’s weather.com for the areas that are on the screen. There is also cloud coverage info from the U.S. Naval Research Lab.

“And, if you look closely, you can also tell if it’s day or night around the world by sun and moon icons,” notes user experience designer Jonah Jones.

If you click on the weather icon for a city, it will open a window displaying data about humidity, wind conditions and the four-day forecast. Users can also adjust units for wind speed and temperature, and enable/disable clouds.

Speaking of the weather and the Weather Channel, Twitter announced last week that it has teamed up with The Weather Channel on social weather, which sees TWC using tweets about weather for an interesting citizen weather reporting feature.