Radar Forecast
Plan a safe route around the weather.
Forecast radar where you'll be, when you'll be there.
Radar Forecast answers one question: what will the weather be along my planned route at the hour I get there? Enter a route, a ground speed and a departure time. The app draws the route, computes distance and time en route, and puts an aircraft on the map in the right place at the right time. Drag the timeline and the aircraft moves while the radar changes underneath it, so the picture you are looking at is the forecast for your position at that hour.
How it works
Three inputs, one slider.
Type identifiers separated by spaces — KFWS KLIT KMEM — then a ground
speed in knots and a departure time in Zulu. Plot draws the route and shows
distance and time en route.
Each step of the timeline is one forecast hour. Left of now, step back through observed radar to see which way a cell is actually tracking. Right of now, the aircraft slides along the route so the radar you see is the forecast for your position, not for a fixed spot on the map.
Planning
Route around it, and stop if you need to.
Long-press the map to find nearby fixes and tap one to add it to the route. Tap the route to open the planner, where you can reorder fixes by dragging, delete them, and turn up to three intermediate airports into stops.
Give a stop its ground time in minutes and the aircraft pauses there, so every later leg lines up with the right forecast hour. A fuel stop or a weather hold moves the whole downstream picture, which is the point.
Winds aloft
Headwind or tailwind, by leg.
The wind table gives the average head or tail wind component for each leg at altitudes from 3,000 to 17,500 feet. Samples are taken every 50 nautical miles, each one at the time the aircraft actually crosses that point, then averaged across the leg.
A cell is left blank rather than filled with a guess when the arrival time runs past the end of the forecast. Blank is more useful than a number that is quietly wrong.
Icing
Probability and severity, by altitude.
NOAA's in-flight icing analysis, filtered to the altitude band you care about. Drag the altitude control and the layer redraws; tap the map for the probability and severity profile at that point, level by level.
Under the radar
Fronts, charts and station weather.
WPC surface fronts and forecast weather type ride the same timeline as the radar. METAR and TAF are shown for stations on and near the route, and VFR and IFR enroute charts sit underneath, with a navigation layer of fixes and airways you can route around a cell with.
The forecasts
Two NOAA models, stitched into one timeline.
Every frame in the app comes from NOAA. Observed radar is MRMS. The forecast is HRRR out to 48 hours and RRFS beyond it, joined on a shared grid so the shading is directly comparable across the whole timeline.
HRRR
High-Resolution Rapid Refresh · NOAA
A 3 km convection-allowing model over the continental United States. Every hourly run reaches 18 hours ahead; the 00, 06, 12 and 18 Z runs reach 48. The app always shows the newest frames available, so the far end of the timeline shortens as a run ages and springs back when the next 48-hour run posts.
RRFSPreview
Rapid Refresh Forecast System · NOAA
NOAA's next convection-allowing model: hourly updates on a 3 km grid covering North America, built on the FV3 dynamical core. Where HRRR's synoptic runs stop at 48 hours, RRFS reaches 84 from the same 00, 06, 12 and 18 Z cycles. Planned to become operational 14 October 2026.
Reading it
Read a cell by its worst return.
Colour is reflectivity in dBZ, and the same scale is used for forecast and observed frames, so shading is comparable along the whole timeline.
Dark green is 30 dBZ — the point at or above which to use extreme caution. If a cell contains anything above dark green, treat the entire cell as that highest intensity.
The only thing you know for certain about the radar forecast is that it is wrong. Radar imagery carries a level of detail that is misleading. Storms are not in the exact location shown, nor at the exact intensity shown; weather moves and changes constantly. What a forecast does give you is a reasonable estimate of where the weather will be, so you can plan around it.
Radar Forecast is a planning aid. It is not a certified EFB, not authoritative, and not for primary navigation. Always get an official preflight briefing — use ForeFlight, 1800wxbrief.com or aviationweather.gov for go/no-go decisions.