For newsrooms
What we have that a newsroom can actually use
You already have radar, NWS products, and a meteorologist. We are not asking you to lift a map. The gap after a Minnesota hail story is the reader who wants to know whether that cell was near their house, what their policy clock looks like, and whether the roofer at the door is licensed. That is the piece we run, for free, on public data.
Three things readers still need after they close the story
- Address lookup: every NOAA hail signature near a Minnesota address since 2011, plus live MESH for storms the archive has not caught yet.
- Deadline clock: the one-year and two-year statutory suit benchmarks, with the statutes linked, so the story does not invent a filing deadline.
- Roofer license check: the state DLI file, refreshed nightly, including enforcement flags.
Latest mapped storm, ready to cite
NOAA radar estimated hail up to 2.48 inches near Winona, Minnesota on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, across 20 communities including Adrian, Lismore, Dover, St. Charles, Pickwick, Dakota, Trosky, Dresbach, and 12 other Minnesota communities. Radar estimates hail aloft and does not confirm damage at any address.
Readers can check an address at https://www.mnhailbuddy.com/lookup. Storm page: https://www.mnhailbuddy.com/storms/2026-08-18-oronoco
Drop the address check into a story
The box below is an iframe. The reader types an address and lands on the full lookup in a new tab, so your page stays put. No lead form inside the embed. No exclusive data claim. Attribution line is in the snippet.
<iframe src="https://www.mnhailbuddy.com/embed/lookup" title="Minnesota hail address check" width="100%" height="260" loading="lazy" style="border:1px solid #e7e5e4;border-radius:12px;max-width:640px" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade"></iframe> <p style="font-size:12px;margin:8px 0 0"><a href="https://www.mnhailbuddy.com/lookup">Check hail near a Minnesota address</a> on MN Hail Buddy, using NOAA public radar.</p>
Storm feed
When a Minnesota day crosses 1" estimated hail, the storm page goes up from the live MESH pipeline. Subscribe if you want the URL without waiting on a pitch email.
Raw data, if you want to run your own analysis
Everything on the storm pages is downloadable. The processing we add to NOAA's grids is the Minnesota clip, the community naming, and the per-day merge; take it and check our work.
- /api/storms: JSON list of every mapped storm day with per-community maximum sizes and links.
- Each storm page links a CSV of its radar cells (lat, lon, estimated inches), one row per ~1-mile grid cell, ready for Excel or QGIS.
Free to use with a link back. The sizes are NOAA estimates aloft, and any analysis you publish should say so.
How to attribute
The hail sizes are NOAA MRMS MESH estimates, clipped to Minnesota. Say that. Link the storm page or the address lookup. We do not need a specific anchor phrase. Do not treat a radar signature as confirmed roof damage; the pages already say that, and a story that skips it will get us both in trouble.
Questions or a correction: dan@mnbuddynetwork.com.