Forecast map / Forecast, hour by hour

Forecast temperature map

Over Citizen station DW1283, Massachusetts, where the map opens. The whole country

The temperature ahead across the lower 48, hour by hour, for seven days: warm and cold air on the move. How to read it.

Temperature on the map

What the temperature map shows

The temperature ahead across the lower 48, hour by hour to seven days. Played, it shows the day warming and the night cooling, and cold and warm air moving across the country behind the fronts.

How to read it

Below 0 F: Dangerous cold; frostbite in minutes with wind.
0 to 32 F: Freezing.
32 to 60 F: Cool.
60 to 85 F: Mild to warm.
Over 85 F: Hot; over 100 F, dangerous heat.

What it is for

Plan the week by the hour.
Watch a cold front sweep across the country as it plays.
See when a freeze or a heat wave reaches a place.

How it is made

The forecast maps are drawn from the national blend of the forecast models: the models joined into one forecast and corrected against what each place has measured, on a grid 1.6 miles across, the forecast the country’s forecasters start from. Each of its main runs, four a day, is read whole, laid onto the same grid of latitude and longitude as the radar at 2.8 miles a cell, and played forward from now.

A frame every 3 hours to 3 days, then every 6 hours to 7 days, played from now as a loop of 1 to 7 days. As data: /radar/now.json?show=ft, the times of its frames.