Amateur meteorologist released a free radar with amazing features. World-class work, praises the project ČHMÚ

After several months of work, Czech amateur meteorologist and programmer Lukáš Ronge came up with the iRadar v2 radar data viewer. The new project builds on two older ones and offers such a rich palette of features that it did not escape the attention of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. The institute called Ronge’s work amazing and, without exaggeration, world-class. And best of all, the tool runs in an internet browser and is completely free, so you can try it out too.

iRadar created by one person in their free time

Behind iRadar there is no company or development team – it is the work of a single person. Lukáš Ronge is a storm chaser, a member of the Amateur Meteorological Society, and an operator of his own weather station, and he spent months writing the new version of his radar in his free time. “Originally, I wanted to present it already in Radostovice at the meteo seminar, but it still needed to ‘mature’ and finish a lot of other functions and things,” he described on network X.

🌩️ Měsíce práce jsou venku: iRadar v2 – můj nový moderní prohlížeč radarových dat.
Objemová data z Evropy i USA, kompozity, dual-pol, detekce krup, 3D zobrazení, vertikální řezy, boční průměty, odvozené produkty, meteostanice, blesky, výstrahy a další.
👉 https://t.co/fcmTX2ueQP pic.twitter.com/xU0xeqWiQG

— Lukáš Ronge (@RongeLukas) July 14, 2026

iRadar v2 builds on two older projects – the web radar.bourky.cz, which it is gradually intended to replace, and the discontinued iOS application iRadar CZ. This time, however, the developer rebuilt the entire application from scratch, on a new rendering engine and with tools that radar viewers in a browser window had not offered before.

Moreover, he didn’t just receive praise from ČHMÚ. Meteorologist Tomáš Púčik also appreciated the work, stating that it’s incredible that something like this was created in free time. The application is currently in public beta and remains completely free.

What can iRadar v2 do?

The basic principle remains the same – a radar precipitation map – but iRadar goes much further. It renders volumetric radar data directly on the graphics card via WebGL, so they move smoothly and in full resolution, without any calculations being performed by a remote server.

However, you won’t find only Czech radar on the map. The application compiles data from over 20 European countries and, newly, from the United States, and in addition, it builds its own composites for the Czech Republic and Central Europe. From these data, it then calculates a whole range of products – from classic reflectivity to wind speed, hail estimates, or automatic classification that identifies whether it’s rain, snow, or hail.

In addition to the radar itself, iRadar can also display most of what belongs to thunderstorm forecasting:

• real-time lightning, now also from satellite
• ČHMÚ warnings and the European MeteoAlarm system
• weather stations, airport reports, and hydrological stations
• thunderstorm forecasts and reports of dangerous phenomena
• aircraft positions or a network of webcams

You can play all of this as a smooth animation, even retrospectively from the archive, and arrange it into up to six windows side-by-side, each with a different radar or product.

Tools that a typical radar won’t offer

Here, iRadar ceases to be “just” a radar. It can display the volume of a thunderstorm spatially in 3D over real terrain, run a vertical cross-section through the cloud, and show how high the precipitation core extends – things that professionals in meteorological operations usually see.

Enthusiasts will also appreciate interactive aerological soundings with a Skew-T diagram, from which the potential for severe storm formation can be deduced, or automatic tracking of individual storm cells, where the application estimates where they will move in the coming minutes. Most of these advanced features are still experimental, so the developer himself recommends taking them as indicative rather than definitive.

How much does it cost and how do you launch it?

The best news last: iRadar is completely free. You don’t need to download anything or create an account – just open iradar.app in your browser on both computer and phone.

Anyone who wants to have it handy as a regular app can add it to their phone’s home screen via the browser menu. It functions as a PWA, so it then launches with its own icon and in full screen, without an address bar.

For a reader who just needs to know if it will rain in an hour, iRadar is understandably overkill. It will be fully appreciated by anyone who not only endures thunderstorms but also enjoys tracking them – and few similar tools can do so much for free.

Will you try iRadar v2 during the next thunderstorm?

Sources: iRadar.app, Lukáš Ronge (X)