Global Disaster Watch & Forecasts
This map combines observed events, official outlooks and model forecasts. It does not predict the exact time/place of earthquakes, eruptions or tornadoes. Weather ingredients are not calibrated disaster probabilities, and a lack of mapped records does not establish safety.
Worldwide model forecasts
Weather forecast data are supplied by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute through Locationforecast, under CC BY 4.0. Watchtower performs window aggregation, map rendering and explicitly identified threshold screening; MET Norway does not endorse these interpretations.
The overview samples 360 coordinates: 173 country reference coordinates and 187 additional coarse global grid points. Country labels identify a reference coordinate, not an average or uniform forecast for that country. Ocean grid locations are intentional model samples. This is not a continuous hazard-probability field. An on-demand point forecast is available at the map center, rounded to 0.01°; nearby overview samples are not silently substituted if the requested forecast fails.
Windows are 24, 48 or 72 hours beginning at the next six-hour UTC boundary. The displayed valid-from/valid-to times are authoritative; a window can begin several hours after the current time. Every point retains the source publication time. Model runs older than 24 hours are withheld from the forecast overlay.
| Variable | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Precipitation | Non-overlapping source forecast intervals are summed in millimetres. One-hour intervals are preferred; six-/twelve-hour amounts are used only when supplied and fully inside the window. They are not counted again through overlapping intervals. Missing intervals are not zero and are not prorated. An incomplete window shows its partial sum and covered hours separately, not as a full-window total. Rainfall is not river discharge, inundation, water depth or flood probability. |
| Wind and temperature | Extrema over available source model timesteps, in m/s and °C. They are not guaranteed continuous-time extremes. A missing gust forecast stays unknown; sustained model wind is not renamed as a gust. |
| Hot/dry/windy screen | At least one same-source timestep has temperature ≥30°C, relative humidity ≤30% and wind ≥8 m/s. This is a Watchtower weather-ingredient screen, not an official fire-danger index, ignition/spread prediction, or calibrated probability. Fuels, land/water applicability, terrain, ignition and local climatology are not modeled. |
Official outlooks and cyclone guidance
NOAA Storm Prediction Center: day 1–3 convective categories and day 1–2 tornado probabilities are source-published regional products for the contiguous United States. A categorical code is not a percentage. Where a tornado probability is published, it refers to occurrence within 25 miles of a point during the source validity period—not an exact tornado track/time or household probability. A valid “less than 2% all areas” product can contain no polygons; that is not a blank global zero-risk forecast. Official products and definitions.
NOAA National Hurricane Center: published forecast points, tracks and uncertainty cones are matched to the active storm and advisory number. Source valid times are retained, including month boundaries; no track is invented. The cone describes track uncertainty, not an impact boundary or a probability for every location inside it. Dangerous conditions can occur outside the cone. NHC basin coverage is not global. These products retain their own valid periods and up-to-120-hour product horizon, independently of the selected MET model window. Official NHC guidance.
Observed hazards and satellite coverage
Existing Natural Hazards Command observations and warnings remain separate from forecasts. Expired warning geometry and placeholder coordinates are excluded. Older source history is opt-in. The optional full USGS seven-day catalog adds recorded earthquakes, with a magnitude filter; it is not earthquake prediction. Earthquake depth is retained as a metric, not treated as point altitude. USGS tsunami flags remain follow-up context, not official tsunami warnings.
NASA EOSDIS GIBS supplies optional dated IMERG precipitation, VIIRS three-day flood classification, VIIRS thermal anomalies and MODIS snow-cover imagery. These are observation/estimate products, not future forecasts. Satellite flood classification is not ground-confirmed inundation depth; thermal detections are not confirmed fire perimeters; snow cover is not avalanche probability. Clouds, product gaps and publication lag apply. Transparent or blank pixels do not establish absence of hazard. Source symbology and legends are available through NASA Worldview.
Coverage, caching and reliability
- Source coverage is non-exhaustive and uneven. Regional products are labelled as regional. The map does not imply that all warning agencies, river basins or local hazards are connected.
- Model requests are identified, server-proxied, rate-bounded and coalesced. MET provider expiry and Last-Modified headers are retained for conditional requests. Rate limits pause collection; access denial is not bypassed.
- Background refresh is spread over time. Durable cache data survive restarts. Source publication and validity times are never replaced by the cache retrieval time.
- Failures retain time-valid data with a refresh-status warning. Expired forecast windows and outdated model runs are not presented indefinitely as current predictions.
- Replay suppresses live forecast layers and point requests; no uncaptured forecast is fabricated for historical replay.
- GeoJSON exports preserve validity periods, source attribution, geometry meanings and coverage caveats. Official forecast polygons retain independent source validity.
Forecast-point reference coordinates use public-domain Natural Earth country anchors. Observed events and regional overlays retain their named publishers' attribution. Existing drought assessments remain separate indicators with their own geography, dates and methods.