About Pacific Watch

Our mission

Free, ad-free, and community-supported

When an emergency hits, the last thing you need is a pop-up ad blocking critical information or slowing down the page. Pacific Watch is free to use, ad-free, and always will be — because an emergency preparedness tool should work for you, not against you. No ads, no cookies, no paywalls.

This is built by someone who lives here and wants neighbors to be informed and prepared. Running the app takes real time and real money — servers, database, and the countless hours spent building and maintaining every feature. If you find Pacific Watch useful, buying a coffee helps keep the lights on.

To everyone who has supported the project, shared the site with friends and family, or taken the time to email kind words — thank you. Every message keeps me motivated to keep building. You're directly helping keep this tool running for the community. Mahalo!

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Data sources

All data comes from official public sources: NOAA, National Weather Service, USGS, NDBC (National Data Buoy Center), Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, Honolulu DEM, Hawaii County Civil Defense, Hawaiian Electric, KIUC, CDC, EPA AirNow, Hawaii Department of Health, WastewaterSCAN (Stanford & Emory), Board of Water Supply, Hawaii DOT (lane closures for all islands), UH Mānoa VMAP (vog forecast), Central Pacific Hurricane Center, National Tsunami Warning Center, TheBus (Oahu Transit Services), Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal (HCDP), and other government agencies. Pacific Watch does not generate or editorialize data — we aggregate and display it.

Special thanks to the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal (HCDP) at the University of Hawaiʻi and the East-West Center for granting Pacific Watch access to their climate data API. HCDP provides ultra-high-resolution (250m) climate data for Hawaii, including 100+ years of rainfall history, real-time mesonet station data, drought indices, fire ignition probability, and much more.

This data powers our Drought Tracker, Mesonet Stations, Climate History, wildfire ignition risk predictions, and the rainfall and weather context features. HCDP is funded by NSF and Hawaii EPSCoR and serves over 45,000 users accessing more than 20 million data files.

Add Pacific Watch to your home screen for an app-like experience with push notifications for severe weather alerts. Works on iPhone, iPad, and Android.

What we aggregate

Privacy

Pacific Watch uses Umami for anonymous, cookie-free analytics to understand which pages are most useful. No personal data is collected, no cookies are stored, and no data is shared with third parties. We can see how many people visit each page, but we can't identify who you are. That's by design.

Contact

Have a suggestion, found a bug, or want to say hi? Reach out at contact@pacificwatch.app.