Dhaka Weather Radar & Live Monsoon Flood & Cyclone Map

Few places on Earth live as intimately with weather as Bangladesh, and Dhaka — one of the most densely populated cities anywhere — sits at the heart of it. The country occupies a vast, low river delta where three great river systems meet before spilling into the Bay of Bengal, and that geography exposes it to a remarkable concentration of hazards: relentless monsoon flooding, violent pre-monsoon thunderstorms, and the cyclones that have made the Bay of Bengal coast tragically famous. Tracking these is a matter of survival here, and it's exactly what the live map is built for.

A land built to flood

Bangladesh's defining hazard is water, and the reason is its geography. The country is a flat, low-lying delta, much of it barely above sea level, where the combined flow of three major river systems drains toward the sea. During the monsoon, two sources of water arrive at once: heavy rain falling locally, and enormous volumes of floodwater pouring down the rivers from the highlands upstream. The result is seasonal flooding on a scale seen in few other places — and parts of a low-lying megacity like Dhaka can be inundated for extended periods.

This isn't an occasional disaster so much as an annual rhythm the country plans its life around. The monsoon's rain is the layer to watch through the wet season, when the question is less whether flooding will happen than how severe it will be.

The Nor'wester: spring's violent storms

Before the monsoon settles in, Bangladesh faces a sharp, sudden hazard: the Nor'wester, known locally as Kalbaishakhi. These are violent thunderstorms that strike in spring, sweeping in from the northwest with abrupt, fierce winds, hail, intense lightning and sometimes tornadoes. They arrive with little warning and can be deadly. They're a completely different beast from the monsoon's prolonged soaking — short, sharp and explosive — and they're one of the region's most dangerous short-fuse storms.

The Bay of Bengal's cyclones

The hazard that has shaped Bangladesh's history most profoundly comes from the sea. The Bay of Bengal funnels tropical cyclones toward the low, crowded coast, and the storm surge they drive ashore has caused some of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Though Dhaka sits inland and is spared the direct surge, the cyclone threat dominates the country's weather consciousness, and the whole region mobilises when a major storm is forecast. Decades of investment in forecasting, warnings and shelters have dramatically reduced death tolls — a hard-won illustration of how watching a storm closely saves lives.

Reading it on the live map

Dhaka's hazards rotate through the year, and the key layer rotates with them:

• Watch the rain. Turn on Radar to track monsoon downpours and pre-monsoon Nor'wester storms, and to gauge where flooding is building.
• Track the cyclones. When a system develops in the Bay of Bengal, the Hurricanes layer follows its path and approach to the coast.
• Gauge the heat. Use Temperature for the oppressive humid heat of the pre-monsoon months, when conditions can become dangerous in their own right.
• Connect the threads. The storm-surge and rapid-intensification guides explain the cyclone threat, and the wet-bulb guide covers why the region's humid heat is so taxing.

Radar tells you when the floods are coming, the hurricane layer tells you when the sea is the threat, and temperature tells you when the heat is. In one of the most weather-vulnerable corners of the world, reading the right layer for the season is how Dhaka stays a step ahead.