RadarBug User Documentation

Dedicated tablet setup

Configure a tablet to stay awake, reduce nighttime brightness, minimize navigation controls, and show the RadarBug forecast.

Open the Android tablet setup guide

Open the iPad setup guide

What the app includes

• Live radar overlay for recent precipitation patterns
• NWS rainfall monitor with recent 1-, 3-, and 6-hour station totals
• NWS alerts and warnings for severe weather areas
• Hurricane and storm tracking layers
• Hurricane outlook and disturbance polygons
• Lightning strike activity and configurable local alert radius
• Traffic overlay support
• User-location aware alert checks for nearby storm zones
• Saved home location for anchoring the map view and lightning alerts to a fixed place
• Map style options: Street, Satellite, Terrain, and Hybrid
• Backup Mode: Standalone map support for devices without Google Play Services
• Visit Website: Quick access to official website directly from the map

Getting started

1. Open RadarBug on your Android device.
2. Allow location permission so the app can center on your location and detect nearby storm activity.
3. If prompted, allow notifications so storm alerts can be delivered while the app is active or running in the background.
4. On the main map, use the settings button in the top-right corner to customize layers and map display.

Main map

The main screen shows a weather map with layer controls and status indicators.

Map controls

• Settings: opens the layer and map configuration screen
• Visit Website: opens www.radarbug.app in your web browser
• Re-center: recenters the map on your location with a broad neighborhood view
• Home: jumps the map to your saved home location; press and hold to save the current view as home
• Mute alerts: temporarily disables lightning alert notifications

Status indicators

The app displays counts for:

• NHC storms
• NWS alerts
• Nearby lightning strikes within the configured radius

Home location

Set a home location to keep the map and your alerts anchored to a fixed place — useful when you want to watch conditions over your house rather than wherever your device happens to be.

Setting home

• Pan and zoom the map to the spot you want, then press and hold the home button to save it. A house marker is dropped and the button turns highlighted.
• The first tap on the home button, when no home is saved yet, also saves the current view.
• To move an existing home, drag the house marker to a new spot, or press and hold the button again from a new view.

Using home

• Tap the home button to jump the map back to your saved home view.
• Your home is remembered between visits, along with your last map position and zoom.
• When a home is set, lightning proximity alerts are measured from home instead of your device location. If no home is set, they fall back to your current location.

Settings

The settings screen includes:

Base Map

Choose from Street, Satellite, Terrain, or Hybrid.

Layers

Toggle Lightning Strikes, Lightning Alerts, Radar, Storm Tracking, Hurricane Outlook, NWS Alerts & Warnings, and Traffic on or off.

Radar Controls

Use Radar Opacity to adjust how strongly the radar appears over the base map. Use the Radar Look Back slider to choose how much recent radar history is included in the animation, from Latest Only to 30 minutes in 5-minute steps. RadarBug remembers both settings between visits.

NWS Rainfall Monitor

The forecast panel shows measured rainfall totals reported by the nearest NWS observation station for the last 1, 3, and 6 hours. The station name and observation time appear below the totals. A dash means that the station did not report a total for that period.

Lightning Alerts

When lightning alerts are enabled, you can configure the alert radius in miles and aggregation time in minutes. Use the radius setting to receive alerts only when strikes occur within a chosen distance of your reference point — your saved home location if you have set one, otherwise your current location. The first nearby strike raises an immediate alert; further strikes inside the radius are rolled up into a “storm update” digest at the aggregation interval until a quiet window passes.

On the web, enabling lightning alerts asks for browser notification and location permission. If notifications are blocked, alerts still appear as an on-screen message while the app is open.

RadarBug's alerts are a proximity notification, not a substitute for official safety guidance. For that, the gold standard comes from government meteorology and public health agencies: NOAA's National Weather Service, the primary authority on lightning science, real-time storm tracking, and outdoor safety protocols, and originator of the “When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!” standard; the CDC, for indoor safety and medical first-aid steps if someone is struck; and the National Lightning Safety Council, an independent group of lightning safety experts and meteorologists with detailed statistics and outdoor recreation guidelines.

Mute

Use the Mute Lightning Alerts option to suppress notifications while keeping the map available.

Alert behavior

RadarBug checks whether your current location falls inside a tracked storm, hurricane, or NWS alert polygon. When an alert is active and not muted, the app may display an in-app message, raise a system notification, or show nearby lightning information on the map.

Alert map colors

Every watch, warning, and advisory drawn on the map is colored by the first matching rule below, checked in order — a rule further down never overrides a match above it.

• Warning — always red. Any product with “Warning” in its name (Tornado Warning, Severe T-Storm Warning, Flash Flood Warning, Hurricane Warning, Gale Warning) is red, regardless of category. Checked before every rule below.
• Heat. Excessive Heat / Heat products are drawn as an outline only, colored by severity: purple (extreme), light red (severe), orange (moderate), yellow (minor), blue (unspecified).
• Marine. Small Craft, Gale, Marine, Hazardous Seas, Brisk Wind, Hurricane Force Wind, and Heavy Freezing Spray use plum for watches and medium slate blue for advisories — kept off the red/blue ramp so they still read over open water.
• Tropical cyclone. Hurricane, Tropical Storm, Tropical Cyclone, and Storm Surge products use a warm ramp: orange for watches, amber for statements.
• Flood. Flood and Coastal Flood products use blue for watches and light green for advisories/statements. (Flash Flood Warning is caught by the Warning rule above, not here.)
• Everything else. Tornado, Severe Thunderstorm, Winter Storm, Blizzard, Wind, Fire, and any other watch or advisory not covered above default to blue for a Watch. An Advisory-level product in this catch-all group (Winter Weather Advisory, Wind Advisory, and similar) is drawn as a green polygon instead. Red is reserved for a severe/extreme non-watch product, which is rare since most high-severity products already qualify as a Warning.

Data sources

RadarBug combines live data from several services, including NOAA/NWS weather alerts, National Hurricane Center storm monitoring, Mesonet radar imagery, and lightning feed data for nearby strikes.

Best practices

• Keep location services on for the most accurate alert detection.
• Enable notification permissions for timed alerts while you are away from the map.
• Use a smaller alert radius when you want a narrower local alert zone.
• Turn off layers you do not need to reduce visual clutter.
• The app remembers your last map position and zoom level, so you can set your preferred broad or tight view for the next time you open it.
• Set a home location for a place you monitor often — one tap returns the map there, and lightning alerts are then measured from that fixed point.

Troubleshooting

• If you do not see your location, verify that location permission is allowed.
• If alerts are not appearing, make sure notifications are enabled and the alert layer is turned on.
• If the map looks blank, check that radar or other overlays are enabled in settings.
• If data loads slowly, return to the map after a short delay and allow the app to refresh.

Support and usage notes

This app is intended to help users monitor weather risk and storm movement. It should be used as a situational awareness tool, not a substitute for official emergency alerts, local weather forecasts, or emergency guidance.

Always follow local warnings and emergency instructions issued by authorities. See the Privacy Policy for details.

See Terms & Disclaimer for the app's usage disclaimer, or Contact for questions or feedback.