Your place

Latitude

Longitude

Spin the globe

Map lines

Country borders Coastlines US states

Line color

Past weather

Show

What you’re looking at

Weather satellites circle the Earth or hover over it all day, photographing clouds. Every few hours those pictures are stitched into one map of the whole planet’s cloud cover and laid over a picture of the Earth. This globe wraps that latest map around a 3D sphere, so you can see weather the way astronauts do: hurricanes spiralling, fronts sweeping across oceans, clear skies over deserts.

The time at the top of the screen shows how fresh the clouds are.

Past weather

Open Past weather to wind the clock back. Daily satellite photos are NASA’s true-color pictures from the VIIRS camera on the Suomi NPP satellite, one picture of the whole Earth per day, stitched from the satellite’s passes (you may see thin seams or dark wedges where one pass meets the next). Rain and snow is NASA’s IMERG estimate of precipitation every 30 minutes, drawn over a cloud-free Earth, so you can watch storms march across the map. Pick the dates and the speed, then Load and play.

Things to look for

The spiral of a hurricane or typhoon, with a clear eye in the middle.

Long bands of cloud along cold fronts in the mid-latitudes.

The rows of thunderstorms near the equator, where the trade winds meet.

Clear skies over the Sahara, Arabia and Australia’s interior.

How to use it

Turn and zoom: drag to turn the globe, pinch or scroll to zoom.

Your place: type a latitude and longitude and press Go, or Use my location (your browser will ask). Or tap anywhere on the globe to move the red marker there.

Spin the globe turns on a slow automatic rotation (it’s off to start).

Use my location remembers where you were, so next time the globe opens there.

Map lines draws country borders, coastlines and US state lines over the globe, in any color you pick. Coastlines help when clouds hide the land.

Past weather: choose Daily satellite photos (up to 60 days) or Rain and snow (up to 144 pictures, every 30 minutes to 6 hours), pick From and To, set the speed in pictures per second, and press Load and play. Drag the slider to scrub through; ⏸ pauses, and while paused ⏮ ⏭ (or the ← → keys) step one picture at a time.

The view you leave it on, and any past-weather dates, speed and picture, are saved in the page address, so a bookmark or a share opens the same thing and plays it.

Sharing

Press the share button (top right). It takes a picture of what's on screen and makes a link preview for it. Add a title if you like, then post it to Facebook, copy the link, or send it another way.

Clips: choose a shape (a 9:16 reel or a square) and a length, then Record a clip. The menu buttons hide while it films; press Stop to end early. You can keep playing with the controls while it records. The clip can go on your share page, be saved, or be posted as a Facebook reel.

Each share gets its own page with the picture, the clip if you made one, and a button that reopens this app with your exact settings.

Credits

Cloud and Earth imagery: Matt Eason’s live cloud maps (github.com/matteason/live-cloud-maps), built from public weather-satellite data over NASA Blue Marble imagery.

Past weather: NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System. Daily photos: VIIRS on the NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP satellite. Rain and snow: IMERG from NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement mission. Base map: NASA Blue Marble.

Borders and coastlines: Natural Earth (public domain), via Mike Bostock’s world-atlas; borders show de facto lines. US states: US Census Bureau, via us-atlas.

The 3D globe: globe.gl by Vasco Asturiano, built on three.js.

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Made by Jason Buchheim for odd.place.