Rain check

Tap your spot on the map (or use your location) and it says when the rain gets there, which way it's coming from and how far off the last lightning hit. The last 50 minutes of NOAA radar, rain ahead for 6 hours, wind, and the Weather Service's storm warnings, all on one map. No app, no sign-up.

How to read it

• Radar now is NOAA's nationwide radar picture, new every 5 minutes. Play runs the last 50 minutes so you can see which way the rain is moving.
• Rain ahead (+1 hr to +6 hr) is a forecast, not radar: NOAA's HRRR model, run every hour. It is good at "storms build inland after lunch" and poor at exactly where one cell pops up.
• Your spot lines up the radar from 20 minutes ago with now to see how the rain is moving, then looks upwind for the nearest rain. Storms that haven't formed yet don't show, so treat it as a heads-up.
• Lightning is from NOAA's weather satellite, the last 30 minutes: a bolt for under 5 minutes, orange under 15, red up to 30. If you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck.
• Wind barbs point into the wind; each long feather is about 11 mph (10 knots), a short one half that. Tap one for the words.
• Warnings are the National Weather Service's own outlines (tornado, severe thunderstorm, special marine, flood). Tap one for the full text, and always go by weather.gov and your local alerts.

Not official and not a warning service. Radar via Iowa State's Mesonet from NOAA; rain ahead from NOAA's HRRR model; lightning from NOAA GOES-East; wind from NOAA's forecast grid (NDFD); warnings from api.weather.gov. To show lightning and wind we send only the edges of the map on screen to our server; nothing is stored. Your spot never leaves this browser.