Earth · eighteen live instruments

A monitoring station
for one planet.

Eighteen instruments pointed at the same planet: the air over a city, the storms crossing it, the ground moving under it, the rivers and tides at its edges, the sky above it and the power being burned to keep the lights on. Every one reads a public scientific feed directly — the national weather services, the USGS, NOAA, the tide stations, the river gauges, the grid operators — and draws what actually came back.

Pick a door

Weather The forecast, and the warnings 48 hours of temperature drawn and seven days barred for any city by name, National Weather Service warnings at US points, a 42-city world board. Conditions New York: air, water and sun New York by measurement — the air, the wind, the river, the ground, the sun’s weather and the sky, each figure off the wire its own desk reads. Windy The live weather console Current conditions and eleven instruments, 24 hours, seven days out, forty years of archive, satellite channels and the severe-weather wire. Quake Earthquakes, in the last hour Every event USGS has posted in the past hour, day or week, drawn as it arrives — newest first, ringed by magnitude, counted by band and depth. Hurricane The storm, while it is happening Every active cyclone in the National Hurricane Center’s own file, read live: wind, pressure, position and movement, on a drawn basin map. Tides High and low, at your beach Any of NOAA’s tide-prediction stations: the next high and low with a countdown, today’s table, and the six-minute prediction drawn as a curve. Rivers River levels, and what is flooding Live hydrographs for 75 USGS gauges: seven days of stage and discharge, with NOAA’s action, minor, moderate and major flood stages ruled across. Aurora Whether the sky will do anything The planetary K-index on a drawn dial and NOAA’s OVATION forecast painted whole — 65,160 probability cells over a hand-drawn graticule. Space Launches, and where the station is Every upcoming launch off Launch Library 2, counted down only where the T-0 is honestly known, and the ISS crossing a hand-drawn world map. ATLAS The whole planet, drawn Every country, river, lake and city on a map this site draws itself — no tiles, no provider — with areas measured off the polygons on screen. ORBIT The live sky, drawn The station, the brightest hundred and the whole Starlink shell on a drawn globe, every position computed in your browser from orbital elements. Flights What is in the air right now Live aircraft positions over fifteen world cities, drawn with trails and range rings, routed through the estate’s own relay so no key is needed. Transit When the next train actually comes The New York subway board: any of 496 stations, the next trains both ways off the MTA’s own realtime feed, decoded in the browser with no key. Traffic Seventy-six cities, and how fast they move The twelve largest cities of every continent: road speeds drawn live for New York and Madrid, alerts everywhere else, picked off a world map. Grid What is powering Europe, right now Any of 15 European countries, its last 48 hours of electricity drawn fuel by fuel, with the current generation mix live as a proportional bar. Clockwork World clocks, and where the sun is Drawn clocks for 64 cities with daylight tinted from the sun’s real altitude, NOAA sunrise and twilight, and an orrery scrubbable fifty years. Sensor The instruments already in your hand The phone’s own accelerometer and magnetometer read from the browser — a spirit level, a compass and a plumb line, nothing sent anywhere. The Moon Tonight’s moon, computed The near side as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mapped it, lit by arithmetic — true phase, the terminator, distance and the next four phases.

What they share

Instruments, not illustrations.

Each desk reads the agency's own feed — the national weather services, the USGS, NOAA, the tide stations, the river gauges, the grid operators — and draws exactly what came back. Nothing is smoothed, nothing is modelled here, and nothing is projected forward: these are readings, not an argument. When a feed is quiet or late the page says so, because a gap in real data is worth more than a filled panel.