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Forecasts come from the National Weather Service's own computer models, and current conditions from the nearest reporting weather station. Both are served through the weather API. A forecast is guidance, not a warning, and anything the Weather Service has actually issued is on the live map.
Rancho Santa Margarita sits at 33.6323°N, 117.5990°W in Orange County, California. The forecast above is drawn for that point from the National Weather Service's own computer models: a seven-day outlook, and a finer-grained one covering the next eighteen hours where it reaches, and the radar and alert panels show what the Weather Service has out over the area right now.
Place data from the US Census Bureau. Coordinates are the Census internal point for Rancho Santa Margarita, and the forecast is for that location, not for every address inside the city limits, and a large city can have real weather differences from one side to the other.
The nearest Doppler radar is KSOX (Santa Ana Mountains, CA), 13 miles to the N. A WSR-88D's lowest routine scan sits half a degree above horizontal, and the earth curves away beneath it, so by the time that beam reaches Rancho Santa Margarita its centre is about 680 ft above ground. That is about as close as radar coverage gets in the United States: the lowest scan is still near the ground when it reaches Rancho Santa Margarita, so low-level rotation and the leading edge of a gust front show up on it. Rancho Santa Margarita is closer to its radar than 93% of US cities.
The closest instrument actually measuring the air is KSNA · Santa Ana/Wayne Arpt on the ASOS/AWOS network, 16 miles away. Far enough that "current conditions" for Rancho Santa Margarita is an educated reading of somewhere else, worth knowing before you plan around a single temperature.
Beam height is the standard 4/3-earth approximation for the 0.5° scan and assumes normal refraction; it is where the centre of the beam is, not its edges, and unusual temperature profiles bend it. Radar siting from the NWS WSR-88D network, station positions from the California observing network as of this build.
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