Creating an Immersive 3D Weather Visualization with React Three Fiber

A comprehensive guide to building an interactive 3D weather visualization using React Three Fiber and real weather API data. Covers creating realistic weather effects like rain, snow, and storms using instanced rendering for performance, implementing dynamic day/night cycles with atmospheric lighting, building forecast portals

#data-visualization

#react

#threejs

#webdev

Sep 18, 2025•21m read time•From tympanus.net

Table of contents

The Technology Stack Weather Components Sun + Moon Implementation Rain: Instanced Cylinders Snow: Physics-Based Tumbling Storm System: Multi-Component Weather Events Clouds: Drei Cloud API-Driven Logic: Putting It All Together Converting API Conditions to Component Types Conditional Component Rendering Dynamic Time-of-Day System Dynamic Sky Configuration Nighttime: Simple Black Background + Stars Forecast Portals: Windows Into Tomorrow’s Weather Building Portals with MeshPortalMaterial Interactive States and Animations Fullscreen Portal Experience Integration with Scene3D Adding Cinematic Lens Flares Performance Optimizations API Reliability and Caching Intelligent Caching Rate Limiting and Fallback Future Enhancements Conclusion