UK satellite weather map
The UK as the satellites saw it, one true-colour image a day for the last week. Pick the day and the instrument in the layer panel.
How to read a satellite picture
Fronts show as long bands of cloud, often curving hundreds of kilometres from the Atlantic. The band is where the rain is; clearer skies usually follow behind a cold front.
Showers look like scattered cotton-wool cells, often lined up in streets downwind of the coast on a cold northerly or north-westerly. Sunshine falls between them.
Fog and low cloud look smooth and flat, filling valleys and estuaries, with sharp edges along the hills. It often burns off from the edges by midday.
Snow on the ground is white but textured by hills and valleys, and stays put from day to day, while cloud moves. Compare two days to tell them apart.
Source: NASA GIBS and OpenStreetMap contributors. Imagery from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), public domain; NASA does not endorse this site
About the satellite map
Is this a live satellite picture?
No, and we say so plainly. These are polar-orbiting satellites that pass over the UK about once a day, around early afternoon. You get one detailed true-colour image a day, as a still. Live loops come from geostationary satellites, whose imagery we do not have a clear licence to republish.
Why is part of today's image missing?
The satellite builds the picture in strips as it orbits. Until the afternoon pass has been processed, today's image can be incomplete, which is why the map opens on yesterday.
What are the two instruments?
VIIRS on the NOAA-20 satellite and MODIS on NASA's Terra satellite. They pass at different times, so one may catch a clear gap the other misses.