About Forecast Parks

Forecast Parks is the national-parks member of the Forecast Network, a family of weather sites built by meteorologists. We wanted a single place that answers the questions a park visitor actually asks: what will the weather do, what does the land look like, and what lives there?

The maps

Every park plate is drawn in-house by the Forecast Network Atlas Maker, the same engine behind the Forecast Canada atlas. Elevation comes from the Copernicus GLO-30 and GLO-90 digital elevation models, with ETOPO 2022 bathymetry offshore. It is lit from several directions, with Leland Brown's texture shading for the drainage, and tinted on hypsometric ramps tuned against classic National Geographic physical plates, with Eduard Imhof's warm-light and cool-shadow rule. Boundaries are the National Park Service Land Resources Division's authoritative polygons.

The forecasts

The seven-day outlooks come from the National Weather Service's National Digital Forecast Database, served through the Forecast Network's point API. They cover the lower 48, Alaska and Hawaiʻi; American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands fall outside that grid.

The field guides

Species totals and every scientific name come from each park's certified NPSpecies checklist in the NPS Integrated Resource Management Applications system. The geology draws on the NPS Geologic Resources Inventory and USGS. Coordinates are checked against USGS and NPS sources. The prose is our own.

The look

The design honours the visual heritage of America's parks: routed wooden entrance signs, 1930s screen-printed travel posters, the black-banded park brochures of the 1970s and the passport stamp. Every emblem on this site is original.

Independence

Forecast Parks is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Park Service. For closures, permits, fire restrictions and alerts, always consult nps.gov and the park directly.