How to use WeatherDuck responsibly — and exactly where our weather, map and terrain data comes from.
WeatherDuck is a planning aid, not a safety, navigation or emergency service. Forecasts, activity scores, inversion ratings, ground-condition estimates and clothing suggestions are automated estimates and may be inaccurate, delayed, incomplete or unavailable.
Actual conditions can vary significantly by location, altitude and time, and can change rapidly. A high score or “likely/very likely” result does not mean that a route or activity is safe.
Always check official weather warnings and relevant mountain forecasts, assess the route against your experience and equipment, and be prepared to change plans or turn back. Never rely on WeatherDuck as the sole basis for a safety-critical decision.
Transparent by design
WeatherDuck adapts live observations, model data and map layers into its own scores, estimates and summaries.
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com, using UK Met Office Seamless. Open-Meteo API output is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Air-quality and pollen forecasts use CAMS European air-quality ENSEMBLE data via Open-Meteo.
Place search uses Photon, whose public demo is operated by Komoot, Nominatim, GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and OpenStreetMap data.
This uses Environment Agency rainfall data from the real-time data API (Beta).
Rainfall data from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Natural Resources Wales data is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains Natural Resources Wales information © Natural Resources Wales and Database Right. All rights Reserved.
Weather radar data is provided by RainViewer. RainViewer currently identifies the UK source as the Met Office in its source list.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Topographic views: DEM SRTM and Sonny; map style © OpenTopoMap (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Elevation analysis uses Mapzen Terrain Tiles on AWS. Europe terrain data produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union - EU-DEM layers. Global ETOPO1 terrain data: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Global GMTED2010 and SRTM terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. United Kingdom terrain data © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015. All rights reserved. See the complete Mapzen source attributions.
Space-weather data and aurora imagery come from NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. Planetarium: VirtualSky by Stuart Lowe / Las Cumbres Observatory.
Light-pollution tiles are by David Lorenz, using Earth Observation Group at Colorado School of Mines / NOAA VIIRS data. Clothing suggestions draw on the BMC layering guide.
