Live Weather Radar

What does this weather radar show on the map?

Three layers you can switch on separately: the precipitation radar for the last two hours plus a nowcast for Germany, the 7-day forecast from the ICON weather model, and satellite cloud imagery. For the map background, you can choose between the official TopPlusOpen map from Germany’s Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) or a cloudless summer mosaic from Copernicus Sentinel-2 data (10 m resolution), provided by Austrian vendor EOX. Both layers run directly in your browser without prior consent prompts.

The split between measured radar and calculated forecast stays visible on purpose: a time loop shows what actually fell, a model shows what’s likely coming. Blending the two into one layer without labeling which is which would be more convenient and less honest.

How do you read the colors on the rain radar?

A weather radar measures how strongly a radar beam bounces back off raindrops, snowflakes or hailstones. That value is called reflectivity, measured in dBZ, and the color scale translates it into intensity bands:

• Light blue to green (5-20 dBZ): light drizzle or scattered sprinkles.
• Yellow to orange (20-40 dBZ): moderate to heavy rainfall.
• Red (40-50 dBZ): heavy downpours with reduced visibility.
• Purple (above 50 dBZ): severe cells with hail risk.
• White: frozen precipitation such as snow or sleet.

The exact scale depends on the radar source in view, the underlying principle stays the same across all of them.

How does the two-hour loop and the nowcast work?

The time loop buffers roughly the last two hours of radar measurements and plays them back on each source’s native cadence: every 5 minutes for DWD, every 5 minutes for the NOAA composite, every 6 minutes for Environment and Climate Change Canada. The nowcast picks up from there: it projects the most recently measured rain cell forward, along its current speed and direction, up to two hours ahead. That’s pure extrapolation, not a new measurement, and it works best where fronts aren’t actively forming or breaking apart. It’s also Germany-only, because the German Weather Service is the only source here that publishes this nowcast product openly.

What does the 7-day ICON forecast add?

Unlike radar, the forecast doesn’t measure anything, it calculates. ICON, the German Weather Service’s global model, solves the atmosphere’s equations of motion on a worldwide grid, in 3-hour steps globally and hourly over Europe up to 75 hours out. Numerical weather prediction models like ICON tend to hold up well for the first three days, after that the uncertainty grows noticeably. Day seven is a lean rather than a promise, but for a place with no radar coverage of its own, it’s the only forward-looking read there is.

Where do the satellite cloud views come from?

Over Europe and Africa, the Meteosat weather satellite, run by EUMETSAT, refreshes every 10 to 15 minutes. Over the Americas, a GOES satellite image from NASA and NOAA fills the gap, since Meteosat doesn’t reach that far west. Separate from the cloud view, there is also the satellite image of Earth as a map background: a cloudless summer mosaic from Copernicus Sentinel-2 data, hosted by EOX in Austria, which requires no separate consent.

Which radar source applies to my location?

Radar is national infrastructure, and there’s no single worldwide network with one open license covering it all. So the source switches automatically based on the map’s center, and it’s named in the legend so you know which one is running:

• Germany: German Weather Service (DWD), 1 kilometer resolution, every 5 minutes, licensed CC BY 4.0.
• United States: NOAA composite via the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, public domain.
• Canada: Environment and Climate Change Canada.
• Rest of Europe, Africa, the Atlantic: the coarser EUMETSAT satellite precipitation product, licensed CC BY 4.0, averaging 45 minutes old.

That last case also covers Spain and France: neither country currently has an openly licensed national radar feed available to embed here, so the map falls back to the EUMETSAT satellite product and the ICON forecast for those regions. The official base map is provided by BKG (dl-de/by-2-0) and the satellite imagery by EOX (CC BY 4.0).

Does my location leave my device when I share it?

Not toward kittokit, no. Your browser resolves the coordinates locally and only uses them to center the map and display the accuracy circle. Before querying, the tool asks for your confirmation. Some browsers determine position using their maker’s Wi-Fi databases. After that, map tiles load from Germany’s BKG and Austria’s EOX, while weather data loads from DWD and EUMETSAT. US sources like NOAA or NASA ask for separate consent before any image call. The tool sets no cookies for this feature and does not analyze your behavior.

Which related tools help with weather and time planning?

Two neighbors help round out weather and schedule planning: the Moon Phase Calculator works out lunar illumination for any date, and the Timezone Converter converts a time between zones, handy since the 7-day forecast thinks in UTC while your calendar thinks in local time.