WeatherAlarm SLO

Weather Alarm: be ready before the storm arrives

Weather Alarm tracks rain, snow, thunderstorms, hail and wind around you and tells you when they are heading your way.

While other apps only show you that it is raining somewhere, Weather Alarm follows precipitation in real time and works out whether it is actually moving towards you.

HOW IT WORKS

Our servers continuously process live radar data and compute the direction, speed and intensity of every precipitation cell around you. From that we estimate what is coming towards your location, and when.

The key difference: the app does not go off just because there is a storm somewhere nearby. It tells you when a cell is moving towards you, and adds an estimated time of arrival. Whether it is hiking, cycling or working in the garden, you will know sooner when the weather is about to change.

WHAT YOU SEE AT A GLANCE

• What is falling at your location right now • How many cells are around you and how strong they are • The distance to the nearest cell • An estimate of when precipitation will reach you

Open the animated radar map to see what is going on around you. There is also a ten day forecast for locations you set yourself, and a home screen widget with the current temperature and approaching precipitation.

WIND BY ALTITUDE

A new layer shows where the wind blows and how strongly. Not only at ground level, but also at roughly 1500 and 3000 metres, which is where it is decided where a storm will go.

The flow is animated, so the direction reads at a glance, while the colour carries the strength. The time bar reaches 48 hours ahead, hour by hour for the first day.

VERTICAL WIND PROFILE

Tapping the map opens a vertical view for that point. A balloon rises from the ground to nine kilometres and at every altitude it is carried by the wind found there, just like a real sounding. You see how the wind veers and strengthens with height, and where you would end up.

The view also takes into account the convective energy of the atmosphere (CAPE) and the precipitation expected at the selected hour. When the air is unstable it says so, because a thunderstorm mixes the wind aloft quickly.

COMMUNITY

Report hail, lightning, heavy rain, wind or flooding with a single tap, and follow other users' reports live on the map.

Test your forecasting skills: guess whether a storm or hail will reach a given town, and climb the leaderboard.

Share photos of the sky, storms and hail from your area, rate them and comment on them.

EARTHQUAKES AND THERMAL HOTSPOTS

The map shows earthquakes reported by public seismological services. The notification arrives after the event and gives magnitude, time and distance; the app does not predict earthquakes.

We also show thermal hotspots from NASA satellites. They refresh with a delay of several hours and are meant for an overview, not for reporting fires, as the satellite also sees agricultural burning and industrial heat.

Because our servers do most of the heavy lifting, the app stays gentle on your battery.

IMPORTANT

Weather Alarm is an unofficial, informational app and is not affiliated with ARSO or any other official service. Notifications are computed automatically from radar and satellite measurements and may be inaccurate or delayed. Do not rely on it for safety critical decisions. In severe weather always follow official sources and the instructions of the competent services.

Data sources: ARSO, Dipartimento della Protezione Civile, DHMZ, FHMZBIH, DWD (ICON-EU), EUMETSAT, MET Norway, NOAA, CAMS (Copernicus), INGV, NASA FIRMS, OpenStreetMap and CARTO, and geoBoundaries.