What the world is actually measuring — live on your screen
Weather models compute the future. But what is happening right now? That is what the thousands of official measuring stations around the globe are for, reporting temperature, wind, pressure, visibility and precipitation every 10 minutes to hourly. We bring them together in a single, fast view.
SYNOPThe classic weather stations
SYNOP (Surface Synoptic Observation) is the globally standardised format national weather services use to exchange station data. Behind every point on our map is an official measuring station — from mountain observatory to harbour station — transmitting temperature, humidity, wind, pressure, visibility and present weather (rain, thunderstorm, fog, …) at fixed intervals.
We draw on the open SYNOP feeds of the DWD, the WMO GTS and national sources such as AEMET. Updates typically arrive every 10–60 minutes, depending on the station.
17 measuring points in southern SpainAnd our own stations
On top of the official networks we run our own weather stations — currently 17, mostly along the Costa del Sol and across Andalusia: from Málaga (city, airport, harbour) via Benalmádena, Fuengirola, Marbella, Mijas and Nerja to Tarifa, Sotogrande and Granada, plus Benidorm and Ceuta.
Many sit in the same spot as our webcams — so you get picture and reading from one place: temperature, wind, rain and air pressure straight from the location, updated every few minutes.
METARWhat pilots read — and so do we
Every major airport worldwide issues a METAR report — an extremely dense weather encoding designed for aviation: wind, visibility, cloud in several layers, temperature, dew point, pressure, weather phenomena. A METAR fits on a single line and is reissued every 30 minutes.
We decode METAR automatically into readable form and visualise it together with our airport data in the Aviation section.
How observations reach you
Four steps — from sensor to mapFetch
We poll SYNOP and METAR feeds around the clock.
Parse
Raw reports are decoded into our unified schema (wind, pressure, weather symbol, …).
Check & store
Plausibility checks (min/max, gaps, jumps), then into our time-series database.
Serve
Our interfaces deliver station lists, point queries and time series to the website and app.
Why observations matter — even when models exist
Models are calculations. Observations are the truth at a point. When a model and a station disagree noticeably, it is worth a second look: perhaps the model missed a local inversion, perhaps the station is poorly sited — but it is exactly in that friction that a better picture of the situation emerges.
On the weather map you see observations as small station points above the model layers. A click shows the measured values, wind arrow and current weather symbol — directly comparable with the model forecast for the same place.
Stations live on the map
Enable the station layer on the weather map and see what is being measured right now.