What is the Live Explorer map?

What is the Live Explorer map?

The Live Explorer map is Almanac's interactive map at /explore where anglers browse all covered tributaries on one screen — live ratings, flows, and storm and timing context in map popups — then jump into a river page without hunting the directory list. Live Explorer is the spatial front door to the same conditions engine that powers river cards and the Alley Index. It is built for "show me the alley" decisions: which tributaries are in shape within a glanceable geography. The page refreshes through /api/explore/refresh. It shows the locations of Almanac's covered rivers across Lake Erie and Lake Ontario groups, live condition cues (rating and flow context) on markers or popups, and storm and timing signals where the pulse projector and lifecycle stack have data. Explorer uses batch projection paths so the map does not query each river one by one. From a marker, anglers open the full river report for gauges, storm banners, and technique notes. Related map surfaces also expose stocking-event and drive-time geography for logged-in location context. Explorer itself is the live conditions map anglers mean when they say "the map." A typical use is to open /explore after a rain pulse, compare neighboring tributaries without opening ten tabs, then click through to a river page. Pair it with /index when you want the single composite number, or with Explorer when you want where.