Terms of use
Last reviewed .
What this site is
DisasterWeather collects weather and natural-hazard information published by official agencies: among them the United States Geological Survey, NOAA and its National Weather Service, the NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers, NASA, and the national meteorological services behind Open-Meteo. It presents them in one place, attributes every figure to the source it came from, and lists every source on the sources page.
It is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any government agency, and nothing here is an official communication from one.
What this site is not
This is not an emergency service and it does not issue warnings.
In an emergency, contact your local emergency number. The instructions that matter come from your national weather service, your civil protection agency and your local authorities, never from this site. If what you read here disagrees with an official warning, the official warning is right.
Do not rely on this site as the only source for a decision about safety, property, travel, insurance, or the continuity of a business or operation. It is a monitoring aid, not an alerting system: it cannot guarantee that it will show you an event, or show it in time.
Accuracy and availability
The data is provided as it arrives. Early figures for a live event are preliminary by nature: the USGS revises earthquake magnitudes, depths and locations as more seismic stations report, forecasts change with every model run, and alerts are updated, extended and cancelled by the agencies that issue them. Every page shows how old its data is and says where it came from, so you can judge it.
Upstream feeds go down, rate limit, and occasionally publish something malformed. When that happens this site says so rather than guessing or quietly showing you an old number. Even so, the service is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, and no guarantee is made of accuracy, completeness, timeliness or availability.
To the fullest extent the law allows, the operator of this site accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising from use of it, or from reliance on anything it displays.
Using the site fairly
You are welcome to use this site, link to it, and quote it with attribution. Please do not:
- script or scrape the internal API in bulk. It is rate limited, and every cache miss spends the quota of a public agency that provides its data for free. If you want the data, take it from the source: every one of them is listed and free to use.
- republish this site’s pages as your own, or present its output as an official warning from any agency.
- interfere with the service, attempt to gain access to systems or accounts, or use it to break any law.
Data, licences and attribution
The underlying data belongs to the agencies that publish it and carries their own licences, listed per source on the sources page. United States federal data from USGS, NOAA and NASA is generally public domain. Map data comes from OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database Licence, with basemap tiles from CARTO and Esri. If you reuse anything from here, honour the licence of the source rather than crediting this site.
Links to external sites are provided for reference. This site does not control them and is not responsible for their content.
Changes
These terms may change as the site changes. The review date above moves when they do, and continuing to use the site means the current version applies.
See also the privacy page.