About Fictonia

A Summarized History

Fictonia is a detailed fictional map that has states, counties, cities, towns, and more. The map’s main focus is severe weather, and it has plenty of it. 

The project began on August 25, 2023. The name comes from the word "fictional" and I accidentally misspelled it as "fictonia" and thought that could be a good name for my world, so I stuck with it. I created one main National Weather Service office for the map, known as Greenville-Spartanburg (GSP), so that weather alerts could be issued.

Fictonia remained as a map with just a few counties for a while. On September 1st, many states were created, although counties in these states were not established until early 2024. In January 2024, the first state to be completely finished was the state of Florence, and with the finishing of the counties there, a new National Weather Service office was created, Bridgewater (BGW).

Since then, almost every month new counties and new states have been added. Fictonia is now at 2 countries, 22 states in the Central Fictonian Republic, and 690 counties within those states (691 if you include the independent City of Hopewell).

Fictonia's Team Members

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the point of Fictonia?

The point of Fictonia is it is meant to be a fictional world for those into meteorology and geology. It can help those wanting to get into a professional career practice the general things they need to do before they actually get a job in the career. For example, if you want to be a meteorologist and work at the National Weather Service, you can get a practice understanding meteorology and cooperating with people before you have to do it at work.

Why does it focus on severe weather?

The founder of the project (Tanek/Diamond), always has had an interest in severe weather. His interest in weather when creating this world made an original focus be on severe weather, and to this day that focus is still very much applied.

What programs are used?

For maps, Tanek/Diamond uses Paint.NET, a free Windows program.

For warning graphics, some of us use Google Slides with a bunch of templates we already have.

For radar, we all use this very site, the radar page in the Weather section.

How are storms generated in Fictonia?

Real weather radar data (from the eastern United States) is pulled from a series of images on IEMBot and stitched together. The map of Fictonia is then overlayed on the weather radar. There is no sort of algorithm or data plotted in to generate storms, it takes storms that are in real life and overlays it onto our map.

Why are storms in Fictonia warned but not warned in real life?

Storms are intentionally exaggerated in Fictonia in some cases to be stronger than they are in real life. This is a part of the project, as to make it more fun we often take the real weather radar data, but increase what it shows (in terms of intensity) by almost 2x.

Why are storms in Fictonia not warned but warned in real life?

This project is not 24/7, and cannot be worked on all the time. We all as a team need breaks every so often, so in most cases actually storms in real life will not have corresponding warnings in Fictonia. It is only on certain days when team members are up for it that warnings will begin to be issued.

Are there socials for Fictonia?

Yes. We have a YouTube channel, a Discord server, and a Twitter/X account.

How do I join the team?

Join the Discord server and at the beginning, select what section of the project you want to work in or view (Meteorology, Geology, Journalism). Once you select this, you are automatically a part of the team!