mweathercn — Live China Weather Forecast, Radar and Typhoon Alerts

Published 22 September 2026 · Updated 30 September 2026, 08:10 CST

mweathercn puts one question first: what will the weather actually do in the next six hours? The page bundles hourly city forecasts, a live radar mosaic, typhoon bulletins and an AQI reading so a trip, a delivery run or a shift change can be decided in about two minutes.

• 1 hforecast refresh cycle
• 6–10 minradar frame interval
• 340+cities tracked
• 4 tiersofficial warning levels

Late September into early October is the awkward part of the Chinese weather calendar: the typhoon season is winding down but not finished, autumn rain bands still cross the Yangtze delta, and the National Day travel window starts on 1 October. That makes the next seven days the busiest stretch of the year for checking whether a six-hour travel window is safe. Start with the hourly forecast, confirm it against the live radar loop, then check the warning board before committing to a departure time.

Hourly weather forecast by city

Below is a sample of the 24-hour timeline mweathercn shows for each city: temperature, hourly rain rate in millimetres per hour, wind direction and wind speed in metres per second. Values are rounded to the nearest whole degree and the nearest 0.1 mm/h.

How to plan a travel window in four steps

1. Pick the city and the real windowUse the window you will actually be outdoors, not the whole day — a 14:00–17:00 slot for a transfer, for example.
2. Read rain rate, not just the iconBelow 0.5 mm/h is drizzle you can walk through; 3 mm/h and above means standing water and slower traffic.
3. Confirm against the radar loopCheck whether the band is moving toward your route or already past it. See the radar section for how to read frames.
4. Lock in after warnings and AQIOpen the warning board and the AQI panel before you leave.

Rule of thumb: if rain rate peaks above 5 mm/h in any hour of your window, shift the window by one to two hours rather than dressing for it.

Live weather radar and precipitation maps

The radar layer on mweathercn is a composite mosaic of national radar sites, refreshed every 6 to 10 minutes and animated over the past three hours. Colour is not decoration: it maps directly to reflectivity.

Reading the colour scale

• Light green (15–25 dBZ) — light rain, visibility mostly unaffected.
• Dark green to yellow (25–40 dBZ) — steady moderate rain, road spray and slower traffic.
• Orange to red (40–55 dBZ) — heavy showers, possible short-term urban flooding.
• Purple and above (55 dBZ+) — convective cores, often with hail or damaging gusts.

Reading motion, not just position

Step through the loop and watch the leading edge of a band. In eastern China most autumn systems track west to east or northwest to southeast, at roughly 30 to 60 km/h. If the edge crosses your route in fewer frames than the number of hours until you travel, you will meet it. The methodology section explains why radar nowcasts stay reliable only for about two hours.

Radar shows what is falling now. For anything beyond two hours, cross-check the hourly forecast before you decide.

Typhoon tracking and extreme weather alerts

China issues public warnings on a four-colour scale. The board below lists what each level means for travel, and the provinces most likely to be affected in a late-season system.

• Blue Low-level advisory. Coastal wind picks up; ferry schedules may be reviewed. Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang coasts.
• Yellow Schools and outdoor works review plans; small craft return to port. Guangdong, Hainan, Fujian.
• Orange High-speed rail speed limits and flight delays become likely. Zhejiang, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong.
• Red Suspensions of ferry, rail and air segments are expected; stay indoors. Coastal provinces plus inland rain belts.

Late-season window to watch

Between late September and mid-October the Northwest Pacific still spawns systems that recurve toward the East China Sea. For anyone travelling in the 1–7 October holiday window, the practical check is a single one: does the forecast track run north of 22°N while you are on the coast? If yes, re-check the radar loop and the hourly wind figures twice a day.

Warning levels can change within hours. Re-open this page rather than relying on a screenshot taken the day before.

City air quality and travel advice

AQI is reported alongside the hourly forecast, with the dominant pollutant named. Numbers differ sharply between cities on the same day, so a national average is useless — check the city you are standing in.

• Beijing62Moderate · PM2.5 38 µg/m³
• Shanghai41Good · O₃ 74 µg/m³
• Guangzhou55Moderate · PM10 61 µg/m³
• Chengdu88Moderate · PM2.5 54 µg/m³

What to do with the number

• 0–50 Good — normal outdoor activity, no adjustment needed.
• 51–100 Moderate — sensitive groups may notice irritation; keep hard running sessions under 45 minutes.
• 101–150 Unhealthy for sensitive groups — mask for long outdoor waits; move workouts indoors.
• Above 150 — reduce outdoor time, use a filtering mask and keep windows closed.

Dressing advice follows the hourly temperature, not the daily high: in Beijing or Shanghai in early October, a 15 °C evening after a 24 °C afternoon means a light layer is worth carrying to any 20:00 engagement.

How the mweathercn forecast pipeline works

Understanding the inputs explains the limits. mweathercn does not run its own global model; it aggregates and normalises what already exists, then presents it on one timeline so the numbers agree with each other.

Observation layer

Surface stations report temperature, dew point, pressure and wind every 5 to 60 minutes depending on station class. These observations anchor the "now" values and are what makes the first two forecast hours far more reliable than hour twelve. Quality control removes sensors that drift or flatline, which is why a city occasionally shows a gap instead of a wrong number.

Numerical model layer

Hourly temperature and precipitation come from numerical weather prediction output, interpolated to each city's coordinates. Model grids in the 3 to 9 km range resolve regional rain bands but not individual thunderstorm cells — that is precisely the gap the radar layer fills. Ensemble spread is the honest error bar: when members disagree by more than 3 °C, the page stays conservative.

Nowcasting and warnings

Radar extrapolation gives a useful 60 to 120 minute projection of a rain band's motion. Beyond that, accuracy decays quickly and the numerical model takes over. Official warnings are ingested as separate objects and are never generated by mweathercn — they are the authority for orange and red levels, and travel decisions should follow them, not the aggregated page.

Frequently asked questions about mweathercn

Keep mweathercn within one tap

Before the holiday travel window, do three things: bookmark this page for the hourly timeline, enable warning alerts so a level change reaches you instead of waiting to be found, and save the radar loop for the two hours immediately before departure.