Weather Vibe

Weather Vibe is a local, browser-based radar console for monitoring current radar, live single-site NEXRAD chunks, and active National Weather Service alerts on a high-contrast map.

What It Does

• Shows a national precipitation radar composite from Iowa State University IEM.
• Plays a short precipitation loop from recent WMS radar frames.
• Connects to a local WebSocket backend for live single-site Level II radar chunks.
• Renders live radar products on a custom Leaflet canvas layer:
  • composite reflectivity
  • base velocity
  • correlation coefficient
  • differential reflectivity
  • spectrum width
• Supports buffered live mode for smoother sweep playback and low-latency mode for faster updates.
• Draws the live sweep azimuth line above the radar canvas.
• Shows active NWS warning, watch, advisory, and statement polygons.
• Uses local GeoJSON for land, water, rivers, states, counties, and city labels.
• Uses a worker for city label filtering and collision reduction.
• Uses canvas renderers and cached live radar drawing to keep panning and zooming responsive.

Running Locally

Install dependencies once:

npm install

Start the app server:

PORT=3000 node server.js

Open:

http://localhost:3000

The Node server is required for the live radar WebSocket path. A static file server can load the map UI, but it will not provide the live Level II radar stream.

UI Overview

• Products switches between precipitation, live radar, wind velocity, and temperature.
• Live Radar exposes product, tilt, and latency controls when live tracking is active.
• Map Layers toggles cities, roads, rivers, water, counties, and states.
• Radar Site selects the nearest radar site when single-site products are active.
• Legend shows active warning/watch categories and radar product scales.

Data Sources

• Radar WMS: Iowa State University IEM
• Live Level II chunks: Unidata NEXRAD Level II chunk archive
• Alerts: National Weather Service API
• Base geography: local GeoJSON files in data/
• Roads: Esri World Transportation reference tiles

Notes

This is situational-awareness software, not an official warning source. Always use official NWS products and local emergency guidance for safety decisions.