A quick walkthrough of every section in the app — what it shows, where the data comes from, and what to watch for during severe weather.
Type a US city and state (e.g. Nashville, TN) into the search bar and press Go — or tap Use My Location to load weather for your current GPS position.
Once a location loads, the search bar collapses to keep the page clean. To search a new location, tap the ☰ Menu button in the top right and select Search a New Location.
Your last-searched location is remembered automatically, so it reloads the next time you visit. You can also save favorites by clicking the star icon after searching.
The header bar has a dedicated RADAR button for one-tap access to the interactive radar page — no menu required. Tap the ☰ button (also in the header) to open the full menu. From here you can access My Locations, search a new city, adjust your Appearance, visit the guide, or send feedback — all without cluttering the main page.
When there are active severe weather alerts for your current location or any saved location, a red dot appears on the menu button so you know something needs attention at a glance.
StormPulse is a Progressive Web App (PWA) — which means you can install it on your phone's home screen and use it just like a native app. Once installed, it launches full-screen without any browser chrome, loads faster, and works with limited connectivity using cached data.
iPhone / iPad (Safari)
Android (Chrome)
What you get after installing
Open the ☰ Menu and tap Appearance to expand the theme picker. Choose from thirteen color themes — your selection is saved automatically and restored on your next visit.
Tap My Locations in the header to open a slide-in panel showing current conditions for each of your saved locations — temperature, condition, high/low, rain chance, wind, and any active alerts.
To save a location, search for it and tap the ☆ star next to the location name in the header. You can save up to 6 locations. Tap any card in the panel to load that location fully, or tap the ✕ to remove it.
The Daily Summary hero card leads the home feed with a plain-English headline describing today's most important weather story — whether that's a pleasant afternoon, a heat advisory, or an elevated storm risk. On days with an SPC Slight or higher outlook, the headline names the primary hazard (tornado, damaging wind, or large hail) scaled to how serious the threat is.
Below the headline a sub-line gives a quick context note — humidity comfort, heat index, morning fog, etc. — and a What to Wear line offers a one- or two-sentence clothing suggestion based on the high/low temperature, rain probability, and wind. The card refreshes automatically every 5 minutes with the rest of the weather data.
Current conditions are organized into three focused cards, each updated every 5 minutes from Open-Meteo.
The Heat & Comfort card (left, top on mobile) covers temperature, feels-like, a 48-hour temperature trend sparkline, humidity with a plain-English dew point comfort level, and UV index. Dew point comfort ranges from Comfortable through Moderate, Humid, Very Humid, Oppressive, to Dangerous — color-coded so you don't need to know what the dew point number means. On days when the feels-like reaches 90°F or above, a heat safety context line appears below the temperature with actionable guidance scaled to the severity.
The Sky & Wind card (right, second on mobile) shows the current sky condition, wind speed and direction, and visibility.
The Precipitation card (full-width) combines two views: today's total rainfall and chance up top, then the Next 24 Hours rain chances chart below. Yellow bars mean rain likely (70%+), bright blue bars mean rain expected (40–69%), and faint blue bars mean rain possible (5–39%). A "next rain" plain-English summary heads the chart. Below the hourly strip, the Past 24 Hours section shows hourly rainfall totals so you can see what's already fallen.
When NWS alerts are active for your exact location, an Active Alerts card appears at the very top of the home feed — above everything else — with each alert displayed as an IBW-tier-styled row. On clear days the card is hidden entirely so it's never in the way.
Alerts are pulled directly from the National Weather Service on an adaptive schedule — every 60 seconds when conditions are calm, speeding up to 10 seconds during a Tornado Emergency. When multiple alerts are active, they're sorted by severity so the most critical warning always appears first.
Tap any alert row to see the full NWS report text, including the affected area, effective and expiration times, and the issuing forecast office. A View on Radar → link opens the radar page with the warning polygon highlighted. A link to the complete report on weather.gov is also included at the bottom of each detail view.
When multiple alerts are active simultaneously, they appear in this order: Tornado Emergency → PDS Tornado Warning → Observed Tornado Warning → Tornado Warning → Destructive SVR Warning → Severe Thunderstorm Warning → Flash Flood Warning → Flood Warning → Tornado Watch → SVR Watch → Flash Flood Watch → Flood Watch → Flood Advisory.
On days when the Storm Prediction Center has issued a Marginal or higher risk for your area, an SPC Outlook card appears on the home feed between the Daily Summary and Current Conditions. It shows the categorical risk level (TSTM through HIGH) in the SPC's own color scheme, a plain-English description of what that risk level means, and — for Days 1 and 2 — probability bars for tornado, damaging wind, and large hail. On days below Marginal the card stays hidden.
If tomorrow also carries a Marginal or higher risk, a Tomorrow row appears below the today section with its own badge and description — so you can see what's coming in one glance without expanding anything.
Tap Read Discussion ▾ inside the card to load and expand the latest SPC Day 1 Convective Discussion — the forecasters' own narrative explaining the reasoning behind today's outlook. The text is fetched on demand and cached for the session so it's fast to close and re-open. It trims the boilerplate header and termination lines, keeping only the meteorological substance.
When severe weather has occurred near you, the Recent Storm Reports section automatically appears below the radar panel showing confirmed events within 75 miles of your location from the past 24 hours. It only shows up when there's something to report — on quiet days it stays hidden.
Reports are sourced directly from NWS Local Storm Reports (LSRs) — official records submitted by trained storm spotters, emergency managers, and law enforcement, then verified by NWS meteorologists. The following event types are included:
🌪 Tornado · 🌀 Funnel Cloud · 🌩 Wall Cloud · 🧊 Hail · 💨 Thunderstorm Wind Damage · 💨 Thunderstorm Wind Gust · 🌊 Flash Flood · 🌊 Flood · 🌬 Non-Thunderstorm Wind
Each report shows the event type, magnitude (hail size in inches, wind speed in mph), the reporting location, and the time it occurred. Reports refresh every 30 minutes automatically.
Tap the RADAR button in the header to open the interactive radar page. StormPulse automatically selects your nearest WSR-88D radar site and streams animated site-specific tiles — sharper and more localized than a national composite. The animation loops across recent frames; scrub through manually with the timeline or let it play. Warning polygons, county boundaries, and a location marker are overlaid directly on the radar. Tapping anywhere on the map opens a severity-sorted list of everything active at that point — NWS warnings and SPC outlook polygons together. Tap any row to open its full detail card.
Switching radar sites — tap any site dot on the map to switch to that WSR-88D site. Your selection is shown in the bottom bar and remembered between sessions. To return to the national composite, tap Composite in the header pill.
Radar products — in site mode, tap the product indicator in the bottom bar to switch between:
All non-reflectivity products are automatically disabled when viewing the national composite — they are only meaningful for a single site's beam.
Site radar comes directly from NOAA, and the color legend shown in the product info card is rendered by NOAA too, so the scale always matches exactly what you're looking at.
When site radar is unavailable — if your nearest radar site is temporarily offline or the data service is having problems, StormPulse automatically switches to an animated national composite and updates the selector to reflect this. A brief note appears at the top of the map. No action needed — the app recovers automatically once service is restored.
SPC Outlook overlay — tap the SPC Outlook button in the product row to enable it. When active, a two-row sub-row appears below the product pill:
Categorical overlays show SPC risk polygons (MRGL / SLGT / ENH / MDT / HIGH) for the selected day using the standard SPC color scheme, with dashed outlines to distinguish them from NWS warning borders. Tapping a categorical polygon shows the risk tier and, for Day 1, the SPC Convective Discussion fetched on demand.
Probability overlays (Tornado, Wind, Hail) show percent-chance polygons for Days 1 and 2. The color scale runs green (2–10%) through yellow, orange, red, and magenta (60%+), matching SPC's published probability maps. Tapping a polygon shows the percentage and the standard "within 25 miles of any point" definition. Areas with diagonal hatching overlaid on the probability fill indicate a significant threat — the SPC has designated that zone as having elevated potential for significant tornadoes (EF2+), significant wind gusts (65+ kt), or significant hail (2"+ diameter). Hatching appears inside the probability polygons when present and is shown automatically alongside the probability fill.
The home page SPC card has a View on Radar link that opens the radar with SPC Outlook already activated.
Mesoscale Discussions (MCDs) — active MCDs appear as dashed purple polygons on the radar map by default. MCDs are SPC situational awareness products issued before a watch when storm development is underway but not yet watch-worthy. Toggle them on or off in Alert Filters (☰ menu → Alert Filters → SPC Products). Tapping an MCD polygon shows the discussion number, what it is concerning, and a link to the full SPC discussion on spc.noaa.gov.
Each day shows a high/low, precipitation probability, and a condition summary. Tap any day card to expand it and see additional detail: feels-like range, total precipitation, rain and snow breakdown, max wind and gusts, UV index, and sunrise/sunset times.
The expanded view also shows a Precipitation Timing estimate — e.g. "Rain expected · 10 AM – 2 PM" or "Rain on and off throughout the day, starting around 9 AM" — derived from hourly model data. This is subject to change and shown with a disclaimer.
On days forecast as thunderstorms, the expanded view shows the SPC Convective Outlook risk level for Days 1–3, plus probabilistic tornado, hail, and wind percentages for Days 1–2. For Days 4–7, SPC categorical data isn't available, so only the model-derived condition is shown.
StormPulse pulls from multiple public, free, no-key-required data sources:
StormPulse is a personal project and is not affiliated with NOAA, NWS, or the Storm Prediction Center. Data is provided as-is. Always confirm severe weather information with official NWS sources.
StormPulse is a personal project by WeatherBen. It is not an official source of weather information and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the National Weather Service (NWS), NOAA, the Storm Prediction Center, or any government agency, news organization, or official weather provider.
Data displayed in this tool is sourced from publicly available third-party APIs including Open-Meteo, the NWS API, and the NOAA MapServer. While every effort is made to display this data accurately, no guarantees are made about the completeness, timeliness, or accuracy of any information shown.
This tool is intended as a supplementary reference only. Do not use StormPulse as your sole source of information during severe weather events. Always consult official NWS products, your local forecast office, and emergency management authorities when severe weather threatens your area.
By using this tool, you acknowledge that it is provided as-is without warranty of any kind, and that the developer assumes no liability for decisions made based on information displayed here.