Behind the forecast.

How data reaches Dreadcast

Current conditions, forecasts, and radar come from api.dreadcast.app, the weather service we operate:

• Weather. Our service fetches current conditions and 7-day forecasts from Open-Meteo under license and caches each reading by approximate location. Current conditions refresh about every 15 minutes and forecasts about hourly. If Open-Meteo can’t be reached, Dreadcast shows the last reading marked with its age.
• Radar. Every 2 minutes, our service downloads the newest NOAA and EUMETNET radar scans, converts them into map images, and publishes an eight-frame loop on our content-delivery network. Radar appears on the Dreadcast map; the optional Apple map does not show radar.

Alerts, satellite imagery, hazard layers, and base maps come directly from the providers below. Provider credits and licenses apply wherever their data appears, including data that passes through our service. See the Privacy Policy for what our service receives and the Data Retention Policy for how long it keeps it.

Weather and radar

• Conditions and forecasts: Weather data by Open-Meteo.com, licensed under CC BY 4.0, delivered through api.dreadcast.app. Values are rounded for display.
• Radar, United States: NOAA Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor System (MRMS) base reflectivity for the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and Guam. The contiguous US composite also reaches into southern Canada.
• Radar, Europe: EUMETNET OPERA maximum-reflectivity composite, licensed under CC BY 4.0 and resampled by Dreadcast from its 1 km grid. It covers most of Europe but not Italy, Austria, Greece, or the Balkans, and does not identify snow.
• Weather alerts: NOAA National Weather Service.
• Wind animation: NOAA Global Forecast System (GFS) via the NOAA Open Data Dissemination program, processed by Dreadcast.
• ZIP code locations: Zippopotam.us.

Dreadcast converts radar into map tiles, animates recent scans, and displays them with adjustable colors and opacity. Outside radar coverage, the map shows a “No radar here” notice. NOAA and EUMETNET do not endorse Dreadcast.

Hazards and outlooks

• Severe-weather outlook: NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
• Hurricanes and tropical storms: NOAA National Hurricane Center.
• Wildfires: National Interagency Fire Center WFIGS.
• Smoke: NOAA Hazard Mapping System. Shows analyzed smoke aloft, not surface air quality.
• Air quality and dust: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service data via Open-Meteo. Generated using Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information; neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of it.
• Earthquakes: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. M2.5+ events from the past day; not an early-warning service.
• Volcanoes: USGS Volcano Hazards Program.
• Tsunami bulletins: NOAA National and Pacific Tsunami Warning Centers.
• Solar activity, aurora, and radio disruption: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. Aurora shows modeled intensity, not guaranteed visibility.
• Meteor showers: peak dates from the American Meteor Society, bundled with the app.

Satellite imagery and maps

• Satellite: GOES-East and GOES-West GeoColor imagery from NASA GIBS, part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Contains modified EUMETSAT data where GOES has no coverage.
• Dreadcast map: OpenFreeMap · © OpenMapTiles · © OpenStreetMap contributors.
• Apple map (optional): Apple Maps, with attribution shown on the map. Radar is not drawn on the Apple map.

Timeliness and accuracy

Each source updates on its own schedule. NOAA radar scans usually arrive every few minutes and European scans every 5 minutes. If the newest radar is more than 10 minutes old (20 minutes for Europe), Dreadcast keeps the last loop on the map and marks it delayed; after 3 hours without new scans, radar is removed until scans return. Alerts update within minutes, while some satellite and model products update every few hours. Data can be delayed, revised, or temporarily unavailable, and Dreadcast shows observation times where sources provide them. For safety decisions, always follow official warnings from your national weather service and local authorities. See our Terms of Use.

Website preview

The interactive preview on the homepage uses recorded NOAA MRMS radar and NASA GIBS cloud imagery from September 5, 2026. Other conditions and map events in it are illustrative, and the Colorado wind thumbnail uses an illustrative flow field rather than observed weather. The extreme weather pages are live; their sources are below.

Extreme weather pages

The extreme weather pages show what Dreadcast is tracking now, copied from api.dreadcast.app every minute, as do the live pages Dreadcast’s storm posts link to (dreadcast.app/live/…):

• Warnings: NOAA National Weather Service.
• Hurricanes and tropical storms: NOAA National Hurricane Center.
• Wildfires: National Interagency Fire Center WFIGS.
• Earthquakes: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, magnitude 4.5 and up from the past day.
• Storms on radar: the busiest spots on the newest scans of NOAA MRMS for the United States and its territories and EUMETNET OPERA for Europe (CC BY 4.0, modified by Dreadcast), found the way the app finds them.
• Place names: GeoNames, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• People and metro areas: the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Census by tract and its metropolitan statistical areas, for how many people an event in the United States covers.
• Temperatures: Weather data by Open-Meteo.com, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Dreadcast is not an emergency service. During dangerous weather, follow instructions from local authorities and your national weather service.

Website map attribution

The website’s maps (the homepage’s interactive map and Colorado thumbnail, and the extreme weather pages’ map and cards) use OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, and © OpenStreetMap contributors, rendered with MapLibre.