Live Weather Radar Europe — Watch Storms Around the Clock
Stormtape streams an automated weather map of Europe as a continuous livestream: a pan-European precipitation radar overview, tracked radar cells and high-resolution detail radar for Germany, set to calm lo-fi music. It is made for watching a situation unfold in the background rather than operating a map yourself. Stormtape is not an official warning service.
Open the livestream on YouTubeThe link opens YouTube. Two separate signals are available — one in English, one in German. No video is embedded on this page, so no connection to YouTube is made without your action.
What the map shows
The picture is assembled automatically from several public data sources and refreshed continuously. It combines four layers:
- A pan-European precipitation radar overview. The EUMETNET OPERA composite merges the radars of many national weather services into a single European picture. It shows where rain, snow or showers are falling — across the continent, but at a coarser resolution than a national radar.
- Satellite observation. EUMETSAT data fills in where radar coverage is thin or missing, for example over sea and towards the edges of the network.
- Detail radar for Germany. For Germany, the high-resolution radar of the Deutscher Wetterdienst is added, together with DWD warning information as a processed overview.
- Tracked radar cells. Notable convective cells are marked and followed over time, which makes their direction of travel and their development visible.
How to read the map
Precipitation intensity
The radar colour scale represents reflectivity — put simply, how much of the beam is scattered back and by how large the droplets are. Stronger colours therefore mean heavier precipitation, but not automatically a dangerous situation. Hail and wet snowflakes produce unusually high values even when little water actually reaches the ground.
A radar cell is not the same as a thunderstorm
What Stormtape marks is a convective radar cell, meaning a compact precipitation structure that reaches high into the atmosphere. Whether lightning is actually occurring inside it is a separate question. For that reason the presentation avoids the word "thunderstorm" while only the radar measurement is available. A marked area means: worth looking at — not: it is thundering there.
Direction of travel
Comparing a cell's position between two scans shows how it has been moving. That is an observation of the past, not a forecast: cells split, merge, form anew, turn, or fall apart within minutes. The further you extend a motion into the future, the less reliable it becomes.
Where radar reaches its limits
Radar beams travel in straight lines while the Earth curves away beneath them. With growing distance the beam samples ever higher layers of the atmosphere and misses shallow precipitation near the ground. Mountains cast shadows behind which little or nothing is measured, and coverage thins out towards the edges of Europe and over the sea. An empty area on the map therefore does not necessarily mean that nothing is happening there.
⚠ What Stormtape is not for
Stormtape is a private, automated information service and does not replace official warnings. In a hazardous situation, rely only on official sources: your national weather service, reachable through MeteoAlarm, and the European emergency number 112. In Germany these are DWD / WarnWetter and the NINA warning app.
Important for coverage: official warning information is currently processed for Germany only (Deutscher Wetterdienst). The European MeteoAlarm feeds are not in operation at present. The radar overview covers Europe; the warning layer does not. For warnings outside Germany, please use the responsible national weather service.
Why there is music
Stormtape is deliberately not a fast-paced news channel. The map runs with calm lo-fi beats so it can sit in the background — while you work, study or take a breath. Anyone who wants to follow a weather situation for hours should be able to do so without being alarmed continuously. During notable situations, sparse synthetic voice announcements may be added; they are visibly labelled as AI on screen.
Frequently asked questions
How current is the picture?
The radar sources are updated at short intervals of a few minutes, plus a small delay from processing and video transmission. That is enough for watching a situation develop; for time-critical decisions, the official sources are what count.
Does it cost anything, do I need an account?
No. The stream is freely accessible and no account is needed to watch.
Is there a German version?
Yes. Two separate signals run, one in English and one in German. Both are reachable from the stream overview on YouTube, and this page has a German counterpart.
Can I see lightning strikes?
The presentation draws on radar and satellite data as well as DWD products. It is not a lightning detection network. If you want to see individual discharges in real time, a dedicated lightning detection service is the better tool.
Why is no video embedded here?
An embedded player would open a connection to YouTube the moment this page loads. That is why there is only a link: the connection is made when you click it, and not before.
Data sources
| Layer | Source | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Precipitation radar overview | EUMETNET OPERA | Europe |
| Satellite observation | EUMETSAT | Europe |
| Detail radar & warning information | Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) | Germany |
| Music | StreamBeats (Harris Heller / Senpai Records) | — |
The presentation is an automatically processed rendering of this data and not the official original. Full source statements, licences and attribution notices are on the Sources & licences page. Where and how AI is used is explained on the AI transparency page.
Processed warning overview
The Stormtape overview of DWD warnings is also available outside the stream: api.stormtape.com/warnings. Official original warnings are published by the Deutscher Wetterdienst.
Last reviewed: 10 August 2026