Using the Weather Map

The weather map shows live conditions across all the weather stations around you, and lets you overlay rain radar and real-time lightning so you can watch weather as it moves. This article explains how to choose what the map displays and how to read it.

The map is available on both the mobile app and the web app.

The map can show several layers at once, and you can turn each one on or off.

You can toggle any combination of the following:

Shows current readings from nearby weather stations as colored markers on the map. Tap or click a marker to open that station. Where stations are close together, one marker stands for a group of them and shows their median reading; tap or click it to zoom in on them. On the web app you can also use the keyboard: press Tab to reach the markers, move between them with the arrow keys, and press Enter to open a station or zoom in on a group. Escape closes the station panel and takes you back to its marker. When this layer is on, you can also choose which metric the markers display (for example temperature or wind).

Overlays an animated precipitation radar so you can watch rain, hail and snow move across the map. Radar data comes from national radar networks (NOAA, EUMETNET OPERA, Radar-DPC in Italy and others), served by SmartMixin's own radar service.

Plots recent lightning strikes in real time. Lightning data is provided by Blitzortung.org.

The map is light by default, even when the app uses the dark theme. The other maps are light by default too: on the web app, the rain radar on a station's or a place's dashboard, the weather-warning map on a station's page and the area picker of the Map builder; in the mobile app, the small maps on your dashboards and the weather-warning map. The dark map has dark land and sea, with light borders and place names.

To choose for yourself, pick an option under Map theme, the last section of the map's settings:

• Auto: the map matches the app's theme
• Light: always the light map (the default)
• Dark: always the dark map

Your choice applies to every map. The web app keeps it in this browser and the mobile app on this device, like the app's theme. To change the app's theme itself, see Display Settings. On the web app's Forecast maps page, the forecast animations and the builder's preview are images prepared in advance, so they stay light.

Open Map legend to see what the colors mean. The legend adapts to the layers you have enabled.

When the rain radar is on, the legend shows three separate color ramps:

• Rain — light to heavy rainfall intensity
• Hail — the most intense returns, where hail is likely
• Snow — light to heavy snowfall

Intensities are shown in your preferred unit (for example mm/h or in/h). See Setting Your Unit Preferences to change your units.

Each lightning strike is drawn as a lightning-bolt symbol centered on where it struck. The color shows how recent the strike is over the last 20 minutes: the newest strikes are white and fade through to dark red for the oldest. Strikes also shrink as they age, then disappear at the end of that window.

Note: The lightning layer on the map shows regional strikes from a lightning-detection network. This is different from your own station's Lightning sensor section, which counts strikes detected by your station's hardware. See Customizing Your Dashboard and Managing Your Sensors for station sensor sections.

• Customizing your dashboard
• Managing your sensors
• Getting started with SmartMixin
• Forecast maps