Why every rain radar map is blank over Africa
Open almost any rain radar app anywhere in Africa and you will find nothing at all over the continent — not no rain, but no picture. It is not your phone. The global radar services most weather apps draw from carry almost nothing here: in South Africa the Weather Service does operate radars, but their live feed is not published openly, and across most of the rest of Africa there is no open feed to publish.
We checked that properly — pixel by pixel, with dates and the addresses to repeat it yourself — and wrote it up: why your weather app’s rain radar is blank over South Africa. This picture is the answer to it: satellite rather than radar, and labelled as an estimate every time we show it.
What you are looking at
The field above is built from EUMETSAT’s H SAF rain-rate product: a blend of microwave readings, which see through cloud to the rain itself but pass over infrequently, and infrared readings from the geostationary satellite, which arrive constantly but only see cloud tops. The satellite sits above the Gulf of Guinea, so Africa is the continent it sees straightest, and the blend gives a picture of all of it every ten minutes at about four kilometres per pixel.
What it cannot do: it cannot see light drizzle under a warm, shallow cloud deck, it is weaker over cold ground on winter nights, and four kilometres is coarse enough that a small sharp shower can sit between two pixels. And where the picture ends, it ends — nothing is filled in past the edge, because outside it the honest answer is that we do not know, which is not the same as dry.
- A trace of rain from 0.1 mm/h
- Light rain from 0.5 mm/h
- Moderate rain from 2 mm/h
- Heavy rain from 8 mm/h
- Very heavy rain from 25 mm/h
Rain right now, in the South African metros
Each reading below is the value under that city in the picture above, from the same observation. Tap a city for its own rain page, the next two hours and the 48-hour outlook.
- Johannesburgno rain · no rain expected soon
- Pretoriano rain · no rain expected soon
- Cape Townno rain · no rain expected soon
- Durbanno rain · no rain expected soon
- Gqeberhano rain · no rain expected soon
- Bloemfonteinno rain · no rain expected soon
- Stellenboschno rain · no rain expected soon
- Paarlno rain · no rain expected soon
Rain right now, across Africa
The satellite does not stop at the border, and from 23 August 2026 neither do we. The same picture reaches every country on the continent — Nairobi, Lagos, Kinshasa, Cairo, Accra, Dakar, Antananarivo — plus Madagascar and the coastal seas. We were already receiving all of it and showing a corner of it.
- Windhoek, Namibiano rain
- Gaborone, Botswanano rain
- Maseru, Lesothono rain
- Mbabane, Eswatinino rain
- Maputo, Mozambiqueno rain
- Bulawayo, Zimbabweno rain
- Harare, Zimbabweno rain
- Beira, Mozambiqueno rain
- Antananarivo, Madagascarno rain
- Lusaka, Zambiano rain
- Lilongwe, Malawino rain
- Luanda, Angolano rain
- Dar es Salaam, Tanzaniano rain
- Kinshasa, DR Congono rain
- Nairobi, Kenyano rain
- Kampala, Ugandano rain
- Libreville, Gabonno rain
- Mogadishu, Somaliano rain
- Douala, Cameroonno rain
- Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoireno rain
- Accra, Ghanano rain
- Lagos, Nigeriano rain
- Addis Ababa, Ethiopiano rain
- N’Djamena, Chadno rain
- Bamako, Malino rain
- Niamey, Nigerno rain
- Dakar, Senegalno rain
- Khartoum, Sudanno rain
- Cairo, Egyptno rain
- Tripoli, Libyano rain
- Casablanca, Moroccono rain
- Algiers, Algeriano rain
Be clear about what that does and does not include. Outside South Africa this site answers one question — where is rain falling right now — and no others. There is no outdoor-safety verdict, no forecast, no hazard page and no town page for any place beyond our borders, and we are not planning to pretend otherwise.
The other thing worth saying plainly: this rain estimate has never been checked against rain radar on the ground anywhere in Africa. The people who make it check it against radar networks in Europe, because that is where the radars are. So we know the picture covers this continent — we counted, corner to corner — and we do not know how well it does here. Treat it as a good look at the sky rather than a measurement, and that goes for Cape Town as much as for Lagos.
Official warnings in force around the country
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — KwaZulu-Natal
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Gauteng
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Free State
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Gauteng
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Gauteng
- ⚠ Damaging Winds — Gauteng
- ⚠ Damaging Winds — Western Cape
- ⚠ Damaging Waves — KwaZulu-Natal
- ⚠ Damaging Winds — KwaZulu-Natal
- ⚠ Severe Thunderstorms — Gauteng
- ⚠ Damaging Waves — Western Cape
- ⚠ Damaging Winds — Western Cape
Issued by the South African Weather Service, relayed here. weathersa.co.za
Where to go next
Overhead is a free guide built on live open weather data from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0). Satellite rain estimate: contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026, processed by EUMETSAT’s H SAF and made available under CC BY 4.0. It is an estimate from satellite, not weather radar. It is advisory only — for official warnings and emergencies, follow the South African Weather Service.