Explore

See the radio world change — the Sun's line sweeping the Earth, signals reaching across the planet, and what's unusual right now.

Radio Weather

Weather instruments, radio remote sensing, and space conditions in one place. Each layer identifies its source and separates measurements from model estimates.

Earth Weather

weather

on the ground

Radio observations

reading the world's weather instruments…

Loading radio-observation dataset…

At the Great Falls node — Clear · 7°C · 53% humidity. source: NWS KGTF, via the engine snapshot

Space Weather

Kp — magnetic calm to storm

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— · scale runs 0 (quiet) to 9 (severe storm)

F10.7 — the Sun's radio brightness

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solar flux units · higher = a stronger radio mirror overhead

High Kp = disturbed ionosphere = HF paths fade. No Kp reading yet. No F10.7 reading yet.

source: NOAA SWPC

Radio Conditions

This globe shows real signals the network heard in the last hours — each arc is one radio path across the planet.

DAYTWILIGHTNIGHTsun

feed stale — no data yet · still

0 spots·0 rx stations active·0 bands open·kp — (—)·F10.7 —·window 1h·as of —

bands— (no spots loaded)

legendarc = one decoded WSPR path, colour = band, brightness = SNR, width = distancering beats = station decoded in the last 10 min (two rings ≥ 5)beacon ruler → our receiver, brightness = best SNR todayour receivertravelling dot = spot < 12 min old; arcs fade over 30 min; heat = rx activity, 90 s half-life

How to read it: each coloured arc is one report that actually happened — a small transmitter somewhere was heard by a receiver somewhere else, colour-coded by frequency band. The shaded region is night, with the Sun's point marked; dots are receivers, and a dot only pulses when it heard something in the last few minutes. Yellow arcs are the Great Falls node's beacon "rulers". The globe's own buttons let you change the time window or replay the last hour — nothing on it is simulated.

paths: WSPR reports via wspr.live · space weather: NOAA SWPC · engine data as of 2026-10-16 · live lab feed

Ionosphere Lab · a simulation you can drive

Why does a signal reach Great Falls at one hour and not another? Move the Sun, change the frequency and turn the solar cycle up or down, then watch traced radio rays bend in the ionosphere and come back to Earth, skip past the receiver or escape into space.

Loading the ionosphere…

▸What do these words mean?

Ionosphere — A layer of the upper atmosphere (about 60–1,000 km up) that sunlight turns into a weak electrical mirror. Shortwave radio bounces off it, which is why a signal from Montana can land in Japan. Its height and strength change with the Sun, the hour and the season.

Solar terminator — The line on the globe separating day from night. The ionosphere changes fastest right along it, so signals that cross it — or run along it — often behave unusually for a short while around sunrise and sunset (the 'grey line').

Kp index — A 0–9 scale of how disturbed Earth's magnetic field is, published every three hours by NOAA. Kp 0–2 is quiet; Kp 5+ is a geomagnetic storm, which usually degrades high-latitude shortwave and can light the aurora.

F10.7 solar flux — The Sun's radio brightness at 10.7 cm wavelength, measured daily. It tracks solar activity well: high F10.7 means a more ionised ionosphere and higher usable frequencies. A level, not a rhythm.

WSPR — Weak Signal Propagation Reporter — thousands of hobby transmitters send a tiny, slow, timestamped signal on fixed frequencies, and every receiver that decodes one reports it to a shared public database. Each report is one proven radio path: who, from where, heard where, how strongly. We read that database, and our own receiver adds its reports to it.

Propagation — How a radio wave gets from transmitter to receiver: straight along the ground, bounced off the ionosphere, bent through the lower atmosphere, or scattered. The whole subject of this site.

MUF (maximum usable frequency) — The highest frequency that will still bounce between two given places at this moment. Above it, the signal punches through the ionosphere into space. It rises by day, falls at night and climbs across the solar cycle.