Terms of Service

01 Acceptance & eligibility

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you and Snoflo.org LLC ("we", "us", "our"), the operator of Tower 5. By creating an account, downloading the iOS app, or otherwise using tower5.org or any service, page, feature, or content offered through it (collectively, the "Service"), you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

You must be 18 or older, or the legal age to form a binding contract in your jurisdiction if that is older than 18, to register for an account or use Premium features. Tower 5 is intended for users 13 and up in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA); users under 18 may use the free portions of the Service only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who has agreed to these Terms on their behalf.

The Service is administered in the United States and intended primarily for U.S. users. Use outside the U.S. is at your own risk and you are responsible for compliance with local laws.

02 The service

Tower 5 is a wildfire intelligence application available as an iOS app and a web app at tower5.org. We aggregate publicly available wildfire, weather, terrain, and risk data from federal, state, and academic sources and present it as an interactive map, property-level risk profiles, and related tooling.

Some features are free (the live wildfire map, one saved property risk profile per account). Other features require a paid Tower 5 Premium subscription, described in section 04 below.

We may add, change, or remove features at our discretion. We will give reasonable notice of material changes affecting paying users.

03 Account registration

To save risk profiles, subscribe to Premium, or use any non-public feature, you must create an account by providing a valid email address and choosing a password.

You agree to:

• Provide accurate information and keep it up to date.
• Keep your password confidential.
• Notify us at info@snoflo.org if you suspect unauthorized access.
• Use only your own email address — not someone else's, and not an address you don't control.

You are responsible for all activity that happens under your account. We may refuse, suspend, or terminate accounts at our reasonable discretion if they violate these Terms.

04 Tower 5 Premium

Tower 5 Premium is a paid subscription that unlocks unlimited saved property risk profiles, public share links, and other features that may be added over time. Pricing as of the "Last updated" date above:

Free trial

Premium starts with a 7-day free trial. You may cancel at any time during the trial without being charged. If you do not cancel, your payment method on file will be charged automatically when the trial ends, at which point your subscription begins.

Auto-renewal

Your Premium subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period (every month or every year, depending on the plan you chose) until you cancel. By starting a Premium subscription, you authorize us, through our payment processor (Stripe), to charge your payment method on file at the start of each new billing period.

Cancellation

You may cancel anytime from the Account page. Your cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep Premium access through that period and you will not be charged again.

No refunds

Price changes

We may change Premium pricing in the future. Any change to your existing subscription's price will be communicated by email at least 30 days before it takes effect. You may cancel before the new price takes effect to avoid paying it.

Failed payments

If your payment method on file fails to charge at renewal (expired card, insufficient funds, etc.), Stripe will retry per their standard policy. If retries fail your subscription will be canceled, your account will revert to the Free plan, and saved property risk profiles beyond the Free plan's cap will remain in your account but no longer be accessible until you re-subscribe or remove some.

Taxes

Prices are in U.S. dollars and exclusive of any applicable taxes. We do not currently collect sales tax. If we are required to collect sales tax or VAT in your jurisdiction in the future, those charges will be added at checkout and clearly disclosed.

05 Wildfire data disclaimers

Informational, not predictive or operational

Tower 5 is an informational tool. We do not detect new fires faster than the agencies whose data we display. We do not predict fire behavior. We do not direct evacuations, dispatch responders, or provide official guidance.

Your decisions are your own

You assume full responsibility for any decision made on the basis of Tower 5 data. We are not responsible for property damage, injury, or loss of life resulting from reliance on the Service.

Data may be wrong, late, or missing

Wildfire and weather data shown in Tower 5 comes from third-party feeds that update at varying intervals (some near-real-time, some daily, some weekly). Data may be:

• Incomplete — not every fire, evacuation order, or weather alert is captured by our upstream sources.
• Delayed — satellite hot-spot detection, agency perimeter updates, and weather alerts each have their own latency.
• Inaccurate — fire perimeters are estimates; satellite hot spots can be triggered by industrial heat sources or cloud artifacts; risk model outputs are statistical, not deterministic.
• Unavailable — we may experience outages, third-party data may be temporarily inaccessible, or particular locations may have no coverage at all.

Algorithms and models

Tower 5 may apply proprietary algorithms, statistical models, or other computation to the underlying data to produce derived outputs (e.g. property-level risk profiles, smoothed perimeters, aggregated risk scores). We cannot guarantee the accuracy of any modeled or derived output.

Always cross-check

For any decision that matters — insurance, property purchase, evacuation, fire-mitigation work, business continuity — cross-check Tower 5 against official sources and qualified professionals. Tower 5 is one input, not a complete picture.

Mapping and geolocation

Map rendering, geocoding, and address search are provided by Mapbox. Address search may not return your exact property; nearby coordinates may be used. Map tiles, base imagery, and labels are subject to Mapbox's accuracy limitations.

06 Data sources & attribution

Tower 5 stands on the shoulders of public agencies and academic institutions whose data we display. We are grateful to these sources; please credit them when sharing Tower 5 content. Sources include but are not limited to:

• NIFC National Interagency Fire Center — active fire perimeters and incident metadata.
• NASA FIRMS Fire Information for Resource Management System — satellite hot-spot detections (MODIS & VIIRS).
• NOAA / NWS Weather alerts, smoke forecasts, temperature, wind, and precipitation data.
• USFS U.S. Forest Service — Wildfire Hazard Potential and Burn Probability rasters.
• USGS Wildland-Urban Interface classification, terrain, and other geospatial layers.
• FEMA Disaster declarations and broader risk context.
• Drought Monitor U.S. Drought Monitor data.
• Mapbox Base map tiles, geocoding, and the underlying mapping platform.

Each upstream provider has its own terms and citation requirements. We use their data in accordance with those terms. If you reuse Tower 5 content elsewhere, attribute the original sources, not just Tower 5.

07 Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Reverse-engineer, modify, or attempt to extract source code from the Service.
• Use any robot, scraper, or automated process to access the Service or construct a derivative dataset, except via tools or APIs we explicitly provide.
• Resell, sublicense, or otherwise commercially redistribute Tower 5 data or features without our express written consent.
• Bypass entitlement limits (e.g. the Free plan's saved-profile cap) by creating multiple accounts or otherwise.
• Use the Service to violate any applicable law, harass another person, or transmit malware.
• Impersonate another person or use an email address you don't control.
• Take any action that imposes an unreasonable load on our infrastructure or interferes with the proper working of the Service for others.
• Remove or alter copyright, trademark, or proprietary-rights notices.
• Use the Service in any context where its failure could cause harm, without independent corroboration from official sources — including but not limited to evacuation, search-and-rescue, firefighting operations, insurance underwriting, or real-estate transactions.

Violation of this section may result in immediate suspension or termination of your account, without refund.

08 Intellectual property

Tower 5, including the iOS app, web app, brand, logo, design, code, models, and aggregations of public data into our particular presentation, is owned by Snoflo.org LLC or its licensors. All rights not expressly granted in these Terms are reserved.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service for your own personal or internal business purposes, in compliance with these Terms.

Underlying data sourced from federal agencies (NIFC, NASA, NOAA, USGS, USFS, FEMA, etc.) is generally in the public domain or available under open licenses; their terms apply to their respective datasets. Mapbox content is subject to Mapbox's terms of service.

"Tower 5", the Tower 5 logo, and "Snoflo" are trademarks or service marks of Snoflo.org LLC. Other names and marks are property of their respective owners.

09 Privacy

Your privacy matters to us. How we collect, use, retain, and protect data is described in our Privacy Policy, which is part of this agreement by reference. Short version: we don't sell data, we don't run ads, we collect only what we need to operate the Service.

Payment data is processed by Stripe and never stored on our servers directly. We retain only metadata (Stripe customer ID, last 4 of card, subscription status and dates) needed to administer your subscription.

10 Account deletion

You can permanently delete your account at any time from Account settings → "Delete my account".

When you delete your account:

• Your authentication record is removed from our database.
• All your sessions and pending password-reset tokens are revoked.
• If you have an active Premium subscription, it is canceled immediately and you will not be billed again.
• Saved property risk profiles are preserved as anonymous research data — they are no longer associated with you and you will not have access to them, but they remain in our database to help us improve our risk models. If you specifically need a saved profile fully expunged, email info@snoflo.org with the property address and we will remove it.

We do not offer refunds on time remaining in a paid period at the moment of self-deletion.

11 Email communications

When you create an account, you agree to receive emails from us related to the operation of your account. These include:

• Password resets you initiate.
• Receipts and billing notifications from Stripe.
• Service-critical announcements (planned outages, security incidents, pricing changes affecting your subscription).

We do not currently send marketing email. If we ever do, those emails will be opt-in or include a clear unsubscribe link.

12 Termination

You can terminate this agreement at any time by deleting your account (section 10).

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms, abused the Service, attempted fraud, or otherwise put other users or our infrastructure at risk. In severe cases (fraud, abuse) we may also cancel any active Premium subscription immediately without refund.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination (intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, governing law) survive termination.

13 Disclaimer of warranties

Some jurisdictions do not allow exclusion of certain warranties; in those jurisdictions the above exclusion applies to the maximum extent permitted by law.

14 Limitation of liability

Our total cumulative liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US$50.

These limitations apply whether the claim is based on contract, tort, statute, or any other legal theory, and apply even if a stated remedy fails of its essential purpose.

Some jurisdictions do not allow limitations on certain damages; in those jurisdictions our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

15 Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Snoflo.org LLC and its affiliates, employees, and contractors from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms; (b) any content you submit; (c) your violation of any law or third-party right; or (d) any decisions you make based on Service content.

16 Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of incorporation of Snoflo.org LLC, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in that jurisdiction, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.

Failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.

17 Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, if the changes are material, notify you by email and/or by an in-app notice. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the changes.

18 Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email info@snoflo.org. Privacy-specific questions can be sent to info@snoflo.org.

Tower 5 is a product of Snoflo.org LLC.