WeatherStory Radar · macOS

A radar workbench that runs on your Mac.

Volumetric 3D storm structure, every gate of raw Level II, GOES satellite and HRRR forecast — read straight from NOAA’s public archive and rendered on your own machine. The depth of a Windows analysis tool, built native for the Mac.

Download for macOS

Version 0.9.0-alpha · free for 14 days, every feature · macOS 15.0+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · 179.6 MB

14 days, every feature, no card. Nothing is gated.

Storm structure rendered in three dimensions: nested translucent reflectivity surfaces standing over a dark map of the mid-Atlantic, with county lines and city labels visible through them. — Storm structure as solids — nested surfaces at 18.3, 35 and 50 dBZ standing on their own geography. The vertical scale is exaggerated, and the app says by how much rather than leaving you to guess.

What it does

Every gate, every moment

Reflectivity, velocity, spectrum width, ZDR, correlation coefficient, KDP and storm-relative velocity, decoded from raw Archive II. Click any gate for its exact value, with beam height computed through a 4/3-earth model.

The national radar mosaic across the eastern United States, overlaid with hundreds of amber surface-observation stations and green isobar contours.

The 3D window

Every surface is a stated threshold rather than a look, and the window carries its own legend and height control. Vertical exaggeration is shown on screen, computed from the grid you are actually looking at.

The Storm 3D window showing reflectivity surfaces with a legend reading 18 dBZ, 35 dBZ and 50 dBZ.

Satellite, at its own resolution

GOES true color pan-sharpened to 500 m, clean IR with the published NOAA enhancement curve, and VIIRS passes at 375 m drawn on their true footprint — honest about where the granule ends rather than stretched to fill the map.

A VIIRS satellite swath rendered as a tilted parallelogram of high-detail grayscale cloud imagery across the western United States.

The whole country, undiminished

Every cell of the 7000×3500 composite grid, at about one kilometre. Nothing is thinned to make it draw faster, and the color table is the only thing between you and the number.

The full CONUS radar mosaic with green and blue precipitation echoes across the United States on a near-black basemap.

Storm motion

Cross-correlated between consecutive scans. Arrow length is never normalised, so a longer arrow is a faster storm.

Past the present

HRRR forecast reflectivity extends the loop hourly to +12 hours, with a bright seam marking now.

Long loops

About thirteen hours of the national mosaic on a 32 GB Mac, up to twenty-four on 64 GB.

No subscription

Level II, MRMS, GOES and HRRR read straight from public NOAA and NASA archives. No feed to buy, now or later.

A wide overhead view of many three-dimensional storm cells rendered as translucent white, gold and red surfaces across a regional map. — Gold is the 35 dBZ body, red the 50 dBZ core. You are looking at measurements, not at a rendering of what a storm ought to look like.

Nested translucent reflectivity surfaces standing over a dark map of the mid-Atlantic. — The same volume from inside the line. Surfaces close at the top sampled cone — nothing is invented above the highest elevation the radar actually swept.

What it costs

$99.00 once, including a year of updates. The app keeps working after that year — renewal only buys newer versions, never access to what you already have.

Three-year cost of ownership. Prices verified 7 September 2026.
Tool	Year one	Three years	Model
RadarScope + Pro Tier Two	$109.98	$309.96	Subscription
WeatherStory Radar	$99.00	$99.00	Buy once

The trial runs 14 days with every feature enabled and no card. Worth knowing before you start it: a radar trial only proves anything if weather happens while it runs, so begin it when you expect some.

Where the data comes from

Every source is a public archive, read directly by the app. No account, no key, no server of ours in between.

Source	What it provides	Updates
NEXRAD Level II	All 159 WSR-88D radars, raw Archive II	Every 4–6 min
MRMS	National composite, 7000×3500 at ~1 km	Every ~2 min
GOES-19 ABI	True color at 500 m, clean IR, cloud-top height	5 min / 1 min meso
VIIRS	375 m detail passes	A few daily
HRRR	Forecast reflectivity, pressure, temperature, wind	Hourly
METAR · NWS · SPC	Surface observations, warnings, outlooks	5 min / as issued

The app is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized, and updates are delivered over a cryptographically signed feed. Each release publishes its SHA-256 so you can verify the download.

Download it

Free for 14 days with every feature enabled. macOS 15.0 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel.

Download 0.9.0-alpha

179.6 MB · published 2026-09-12 · notarized by Apple

SHA-256fd0ab7360be8472230bc12a1bb120b81a460de5179db64ebc65586616c0053c9

Still want release news? Join the list for major versions only.

Honest limits

United States coverage: all 159 operational WSR-88D radars. TDWR and research radars are not included.
macOS 15 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel. No Windows or Linux build is planned.
Memory-hungry by design. Long loops hold every frame resident; the app sizes the loop to your RAM rather than pretending it is free.
The iPhone companion is not ready and is not part of this purchase.
Large download — the basemap ships inside the app. Map detail is built for weather-scale work and does not sharpen to street level.
An analysis instrument, not a warning system. It has no alerting, no notifications, and should never be your only source during severe weather.

Learn to read the data: the radar guides cover reflectivity and velocity, tornado signatures, supercell structure, linear convection and forecast models — illustrated with the same full-resolution Level II shown above.

Related: the WeatherStory e-ink instrument, and the daily weather pages.