Real-Time Natural Events on the World Map
The 2D world map now shows real natural events happening across the planet — live earthquakes, tropical storms, wildfires, volcanoes, floods, and more — sourced directly from USGS and NASA EONET.
What You See on the Map
Two new layers of real data now appear on the 2D map:
Earthquakes (USGS)
Every earthquake with magnitude 2.5 or higher from the past 7 days is shown as a colored dot at its exact epicenter.
| Color | Magnitude | Animation |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | M2.5+ | Static dot |
| Orange | M4.5+ | Pulsing ring |
| Red | M6+ | Pulsing ring |
Dot size scales with magnitude — bigger quakes make bigger dots.
Natural Events (NASA EONET)
Active natural events from NASA’s Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker are shown at their real geographic positions:
| Icon | Category | Color |
|---|---|---|
| 🌀 | Severe Storms (cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes) | Blue |
| 🔥 | Wildfires | Orange-red |
| 🌋 | Volcanoes | Red |
| 🌊 | Floods | Blue |
| 🏜️ | Drought | Amber |
| 🌫️ | Dust / Haze | Tan |
| 🧊 | Sea / Lake Ice | Light blue |
| ⛰️ | Landslides | Brown |
| ❄️ | Snow | Pale blue |
| 🌡️ | Temperature Extremes | Orange |
Storms and volcanoes have a pulsing ring animation so you can spot them at a glance.
Click for Details
Click any earthquake marker or natural event dot to open a detail popup:
- Earthquakes: magnitude, location, date/time, depth in km, coordinates, and a link to the USGS event page.
- Natural events: title, category, date, coordinates, and a link to the original source.
How It Works
- Earthquakes are fetched from the USGS GeoJSON feed (
2.5_week.geojson), which is updated every minute by the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. - Natural events are fetched from NASA EONET v3, which curates near-real-time natural event metadata from multiple satellite and ground sources.
- Both data sources are free, require no API key, and return GeoJSON with standard longitude/latitude coordinates.
- Data is cached for 10 minutes on your device and auto-refreshes — so you always see recent events without hammering the APIs.
- If a fetch fails (e.g. network issues), the map falls back to the last cached data so markers don’t disappear.
Why We Replaced the Old Weather Animation
Previously, the map had a random cosmetic weather effect — fake rain or fog would appear on a randomly chosen country every 3 minutes. It looked nice but had no connection to real weather.
Now, instead of fake rain on a random country, you see actual storms, fires, and earthquakes at their real positions. It’s more informative, more immersive, and uses roughly the same amount of resources — one small fetch every 10 minutes and a handful of lightweight SVG dots.
Data Sources
- USGS Earthquake Hazards Program — earthquake.usgs.gov
- NASA EONET — eonet.gsfc.nasa.gov
Both are public, government-funded services providing open data for anyone to use.
Open the map and look around — the planet is more alive than ever.