Most storm intelligence tools show you where damage was reported. THOR Storm Mapper shows you the storm itself — in real time, and on rewind.
The radar overlay and radar replay features are two of the most powerful tools in the THOR platform, and they're also two of the most underused. If you're a roofing contractor, public adjuster, or storm restoration professional and you're not using radar data alongside your hail impact maps, you're working with half the picture. This post breaks down exactly what these features do, how to use them, and why they matter for your business.
What Is the Radar Overlay?
The radar overlay places live National Weather Service radar data directly on top of your THOR storm map. Instead of switching between a weather app and your impact data, you see both layers at once — active storm cells moving across the same map that shows your hail events, tornado tracks, and impact zones.
When a storm is actively moving through a market, the radar overlay answers the question every contractor is asking in real time: Is this storm still going? Where is it heading next?
That question has a dollar value attached to it. If you can see that a storm cell is tracking northeast and is about to cross into a county you haven't canvassed yet, you can position your crew ahead of it — not behind it. That's the difference between being the first truck on the street and being the fifth.
How to Enable the Radar Overlay
- Open THOR Storm Mapper and navigate to your map view.
- In the control panel, locate the Layers section.
- Toggle Radar on. The overlay will appear immediately on the map.
- Use the opacity slider to adjust how prominently the radar layer displays over your impact data. A setting around 65% keeps both layers readable simultaneously.
The radar layer updates automatically as new data comes in from the NWS feed. You don't need to refresh the page or manually pull new data — THOR handles the sync in the background.
What Is Radar Replay?
Radar replay — accessed through the Timeline Playback feature — lets you scrub backward through radar history for a specific storm event. Instead of seeing only where the storm is right now, you can watch exactly how it developed, where it intensified, and the precise path it traveled across your market.
This is not just a cool visualization. It has direct, practical applications for anyone working storm damage professionally.
Why Radar Replay Matters for Contractors
Documenting the storm path for homeowners and adjusters. When a homeowner asks "did the storm actually hit my house?" you can pull up the radar replay, show them the storm cell moving directly over their address, and timestamp it. That's a conversation that closes faster and with more confidence on both sides.
Identifying the damage corridor. Hail doesn't fall uniformly across a county. It falls in a corridor — a path that follows the storm cell's track. The radar replay shows you that corridor visually. You can see where the storm intensified (darker radar returns = heavier precipitation and larger hail) and where it weakened. That tells you which neighborhoods inside a county are worth canvassing and which ones probably didn't take a hit worth pursuing.
Building your canvassing sequence. If you're working a multi-day canvassing campaign after a major outbreak, the radar replay helps you sequence your neighborhoods by damage probability. Start with the areas that sat under the most intense radar returns for the longest duration. Work outward from there.
Supporting insurance claims. Public adjusters and contractors working directly with insurance companies increasingly need to demonstrate not just that a storm occurred, but that it occurred at a specific location with sufficient intensity to cause the damage being claimed. Radar replay, combined with THOR's NOAA-verified hail event data and Property Storm History Reports, gives you a layered evidentiary record that holds up.
How to Use Radar Replay
- With the radar overlay enabled, locate the Timeline Playback Bar at the bottom of the map.
- Click the play button to watch the radar animate forward through the storm event in time-lapse.
- Use the scrubber to jump to any specific point in the storm's timeline.
- Pause on any frame to examine the radar return at that exact moment.
- Use the playback speed control to slow down or speed up the animation depending on how much detail you need.
The timeline automatically loads the relevant radar frames for the time window you're viewing. If you're looking at a storm from three weeks ago, the replay will pull the archived radar data for that event — not just live data.
Radar + Hail Data: The Full Picture
The real power of THOR's radar features comes from using them in combination with the hail impact data, not in isolation. Here's a practical workflow:
- Start with the hail impact map. Identify the counties and ZIP codes that show confirmed hail events from the NOAA/SPC feed.
- Enable the radar overlay. See how the storm cell that produced those events was oriented and where it was moving.
- Run the radar replay. Watch the storm develop and track across your market. Note where the radar returns were darkest — those are your highest-intensity zones.
- Cross-reference with the impact density layer. The areas where the radar replay shows the most intense returns should correlate with your highest-density hail event clusters. If they do, you've confirmed your lead list.
- Generate Property Storm Reports for addresses in the highest-confidence zones before you knock a single door.
This workflow takes about ten minutes. It replaces hours of manual research, phone calls to adjusters, and guesswork about which neighborhoods are worth the fuel.
A Note on Radar Data Timing
Live radar data in THOR updates on the same cadence as the NWS feed — typically every 2 to 6 minutes depending on the scan mode the nearest radar station is operating in. During active severe weather, NWS stations often switch to a faster scan rate, which means your THOR radar overlay updates more frequently exactly when you need it most.
Archived radar data for replay is available for events going back through THOR's data retention window. For recent events — anything in the last 30 days — replay data is available at full resolution.
The Bottom Line
Radar data is not just for meteorologists. For anyone working storm damage professionally, it's a competitive intelligence tool. It tells you where the storm went, how hard it hit, and which neighborhoods are worth your time. THOR's radar overlay and replay features put that intelligence directly on the same map as your hail events, tornado tracks, and property reports — so you're not toggling between apps or trying to mentally reconcile data from three different sources.
The contractors who are winning the most storm jobs right now are not the ones who work the hardest. They're the ones who show up with the best data. THOR's radar tools are part of how you get there.