Chase Archive is built on top of publicly available meteorological data. We don't operate our own radars, satellites, or weather models — instead, we assemble open data provided by the agencies and research organizations below. We're grateful for their work making this data freely accessible, and we encourage you to visit their sites directly for authoritative, real-time information.
Radar & Satellite Imagery
- NOAA — NEXRAD Level II radar and Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) mosaics, distributed via the NOAA Open Data Dissemination program on AWS; GOES satellite imagery (AWS Open Data); and historical satellite imagery via MCFETCH and CLASS for cases predating GOES-16.
Weather Models & Reanalysis
- NOAA — GFS, GEFS, HRRR, and RAP/RUC forecast model output, via NOAA Open Data on AWS and the NOMADS and NCEI THREDDS archives.
- ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) — IFS open-data forecasts, and ERA5 reanalysis via the Copernicus Climate Data Store.
- NSF NCAR Research Data Archive (UCAR) — supplemental ERA5 mirror.
- Nadocast (Brian Hempel) — independent machine-learning severe weather probability forecasts.
Surface Observations
- Iowa Environmental Mesonet (Iowa State University) — ASOS/METAR surface observations.
Severe Weather Outlooks
- NOAA / NWS Storm Prediction Center — convective, fire weather, and excessive rainfall outlooks, and storm reports, archived via the Iowa Environmental Mesonet.
Open-Source Tools
We also rely on open-source scientific software from the weather community, including Unidata (UCAR) tools such as MetPy and netCDF-Java/THREDDS for decoding radar and model data, and SounderPy for building atmospheric soundings.
User-Submitted Content
Case reports, photos, and video included in this archive are contributed by the storm chasing community. See our Disclaimer for more on how crowd-sourced submissions are handled.
If you believe your data or work is used here without proper credit, please reach out at stormchasearchive@gmail.com and we'll correct it promptly.