# General information

AccuWeather's Future Radar API delivers **forecast radar overlay tiles** — predicted precipitation rendered as PNG tiles for layering onto an existing map. Useful for "what's coming" weather visualizations, commute planners, severe weather monitoring, and hour-ahead radar animations.

→ See the [Future Radar Guide](/developers/maps/future-radar-guide) and [Parameters](/developers/maps/future-radar-parameters) for endpoint details and request patterns.

:::warning
Future Radar does **not** currently include Alaska or Hawaii.
:::

:::note
The Future Radar API does **not** provide base map imagery. Overlay tiles are designed to display on top of a Mercator-projection map service (Google Maps, Mapbox, Leaflet, Bing Maps). Tiles are returned one at a time in PNG format.
:::

## Products

Different regions of the world use different radar systems with different update intervals. Without coordination, that inconsistency would cause some regions to appear to "jump" while others move smoothly on a zoomed-out view.

To prevent that, Future Radar groups regional data sources into **products**. When a viewport spans multiple regions, Future Radar identifies the slowest-refreshing product and matches the others to its rate — producing a cohesive, gracefully-synchronized forecast view.

Each product has a unique code in the form `major-minor` (two numbers separated by a dash). Both values are returned in any API response that identifies one or more products.

## Frames

Some endpoints return a list of **frames** — each frame has a timestamp and defines one set of forecast radar tiles. The total time span varies by product. When a viewport spans multiple products, Future Radar trims to the shortest time span, so all visible regions cover matching periods.