Cloudbreak Weather — User guide

On first launch, Cloudbreak asks to use your location. Allow it and the Today tab shows the weather where you are. While it gets a fix you'll see "Locating…"; if you skip permission you'll see "Your Local Weather" with a Use My Location button; and if location is off, "Location Is Off" with Open Settings.

If you haven't saved anything yet, the Locations tab shows "No locations yet" with an Add Location button. Everything in Cloudbreak revolves around your current location plus the places you save.

The Today tab scrolls from the big picture down to the details:

• Top: the current temperature, condition, today's H: / L:, and Feels like (shown when it differs). A small tag names the observation source (e.g. "· Santa Fe AP"), and if one of your weather stations is nearby an antenna chip shows it's the source. A reading that has gone stale is dimmed and labeled "Updated … ago."
• Hourly Forecast: up to 36 hours; switch between Today and Tomorrow. Each hour shows its temperature, a precipitation chance, wind, and relative humidity (RH), and a Precipitation chance chart plots the next several hours on a true 0–100% scale.
• Detail cards for every condition (below).
• Cross-links to Air Quality, Fire Weather, and the Almanac.

The 7-day forecast and the forecaster's discussion now live on their own Forecast tab — see the next section.

The Forecast tab is your week ahead:

• 7-Day Forecast — each day shows its date, the icon, a chance of rain, the low and high, and a temperature range bar. Tap a day to expand the National Weather Service day-and-night wording and winds.
• Forecast Discussion — opens the local NWS forecaster's own notes (the Area Forecast Discussion) for the reasoning behind the numbers.

Two cards on the Today tab cover air quality:

• Air Quality — the current US AQI with a band from Good to Hazardous. Cloudbreak tells you where the number comes from: a nearby EPA AirNow monitor (labeled "EPA AirNow · {your area}") or, where there's no monitor, a Modeled estimate. Tap it for a 24-hour AQI chart.
• Air Quality Outlook (EPA AirNow, US) — a day-by-day outlook with an Action Day flag when relevant.

Open the Maps tab and the layer menu opens for you — one floating panel with everything in it. Choosing a layer closes the panel; toggles leave it open. Nothing heavy loads until you pick something, so Maps opens instantly.

• Layer — pick one: Radar, Satellite, Wind, Temperature, or Fire.
• Overlays — add on top of any layer: Lightning (strike density) and Air Quality (EPA AirNow monitor pins).
• Loop and Speed — how much of the timeline to load, and how fast to play it (Radar and Satellite).
• Base map — Standard or Aerial (satellite imagery) beneath the data.
• Show color key — opens a card explaining the colors and crediting the source.

What each layer shows:

• Radar — high-resolution precipitation across the U.S. and Canada, seamless across the border, running from the recent past straight on into a short-range forecast. It's one continuous timeline: drag back through the last hour or two, or push past now to see where the rain is headed. Forecast frames are marked by an orange time readout, and a small tick on the scrubber shows where now sits. Set Loop for how far back to load, and Speed for playback (0.5× to 4×).
• Satellite — GOES imagery you can replay over the last 6 or 24 hours (true color by day, infrared at night). Satellite looks backwards only, and the newest frame runs roughly an hour behind real time.
• Wind — a flowing surface-wind field; tap anywhere to read speed, gusts, and direction.
• Temperature — a live surface-temperature map; tap to read the current air temp at a spot.
• Fire — the dedicated fire map, with its own section below.

Playback sits in a floating bar: play/pause, a scrubber you can drag, and the time of the frame you're on. It opens paused on now, so nothing moves until you ask it to. Legends collapse to keep the map clean. Use Recenter to jump back to your location, the + / − buttons or pinch to zoom. On Mac, use the edge chevrons to change location.

In the layer menu, choose Fire for everything wildfire on a single map. A Fire layers checklist appears in the menu whenever Fire is the active layer, turning each kind of information on or off — combine them however you like:

• Active — named wildfire incidents and their perimeters, tinted by stage (active, contained, controlled, out). On by default.
• Hotspots — satellite heat detections from NASA (FIRMS) over the last few days. On by default.
• Smoke — NOAA smoke plumes. On by default.
• Scars > 1,000 ac and Scars < 1,000 ac — historical burn scars from two sources: the authoritative USGS/USFS burn-severity record (MTBS) for the larger fires, and the interagency NIFC archive (not exhaustive) for the smaller ones. Prescribed burns draw in cool slate, wildfire scars in warm brown. Off by default.
• Wind — a dimmed wind-direction underlay showing which way a fire could spread. Off by default.

Tap any pin for a detail card (it shows only the fields that exist): an incident gives its size, containment, timeline, cause, fuel and behavior, complexity, personnel and managing organization, cost, and when it was last updated; a hotspot gives the detection time and confidence, with a note that it's a satellite heat signature, not a confirmed fire; a burn scar gives its name, year, and size.

Open the Almanac from the link on the Today tab to look back, not just ahead. The Mode switch offers:

• On a Date — pick any past date to see that day's high, low, rainfall, and maximum wind. The archive reaches back to 1940 and runs about 5 days behind the present.
• Monthly Averages — a month-by-month table of typical highs, lows, and rainfall, drawn from roughly 15 years of record.

Tap Change to look up a different place.

Rainfall in the Almanac is always shown in inches. Looking for sunrise, sunset, or the length of the day? That lives on the Today tab's Sun arc, not the Almanac.

If you own a backyard station, Cloudbreak gives it a home on the My Station tab and blends its live readings into your current conditions.

1. On the My Station tab, tap Add Weather Station (or go to Settings → Weather Stations).
2. Choose a brand: Ambient Weather, Tempest (WeatherFlow), Davis WeatherLink, Netatmo, or PWSWeather. (Ambient is fully supported; the others are in beta.)
3. Enter the credentials that brand needs — there's a "How to get your keys" link with step-by-step help for each provider.
4. Give it a name (e.g. Home, Cabin) and tap Test connection to confirm it works.