# NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper (`acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper`) Actor

Scrapes active weather alerts from the National Weather Service. Filter by area, severity, urgency, or event type, and get each alert as a flat row.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Acquisition Automation Co.](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Business, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $7.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

![Acquisition Automation Co. Search less. Close more.](https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/AOdPHdOpeDpzEPS5f/records/banner.jpg)

## 🌪 NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper

> **Export every active National Weather Service alert as a row: event type, severity, urgency, certainty, the counties and zones it covers, when it was issued, when it expires, and the official headline and instruction.** 14 fields per alert. No API key, no registration, no login.

The National Weather Service publishes every active watch, warning and advisory in the United States. The feed is authoritative and it is also built for machines: alerts arrive as nested CAP records with geocode blocks and time zone offsets to untangle. This Actor flattens them into rows, filters them by state, severity, urgency or event type, and writes them to a dataset you can open in a spreadsheet.

| Who uses it | What they use the alerts for |
|---|---|
| 🏬 Buyers of businesses with physical sites | Seeing which stores, yards or plants in a target's footprint sit under an active warning |
| 🚚 Operations and logistics teams | Holding or rerouting around flood and wind advisories by county |
| 🏦 Insurers and risk analysts | Keeping a dated record of severe weather by area code for a claims or underwriting file |
| 📰 Newsrooms and alerting tools | Pulling active alerts by state or event type on a schedule |

### 📋 What it does

> 💡 **Why it matters:** a business with locations is a business with weather exposure. Alerts carry the counties in the record, so a site list can be matched against them instead of read off a map.

- 🌩 **Returns one row per active alert**, flattened out of the NWS CAP feed.
- 🗺 **Filters by area.** `area` takes a US state code such as `CA` or `TX`, or a marine area code.
- 🚨 **Filters by severity and urgency.** `Extreme` through `Minor`, and `Immediate` through `Past`.
- 🏷 **Filters by event type.** `Tornado Warning`, `Flood Watch` and every other NWS event name.
- 📍 **Keeps the geocodes.** SAME and UGC codes come back in the row, which is how an alert is matched to a county or a forecast zone.
- ⏱ **Carries the full timeline:** when it was sent, when it takes effect, and when it expires, each with its local offset.
- 💾 **Exports to CSV, Excel, JSON or XML**, from the run page or the API.

### 📊 Output

Every alert is one flat row, with the same 14 fields on every run.

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 🆔 `id` | string | The NWS alert identifier, a `urn:oid:` string unique to that alert |
| 🌪 `event` | string | Event type, for example `Flood Watch`, `Coastal Flood Advisory` |
| 🚨 `severity` | string | `Extreme`, `Severe`, `Moderate`, `Minor` or `Unknown` |
| ⏳ `urgency` | string | `Immediate`, `Expected`, `Future`, `Past` or `Unknown` |
| 🎯 `certainty` | string | How confident the forecast office is, for example `Likely`, `Possible` |
| 🗺 `area_desc` | string | The affected areas as the NWS names them, semicolon separated |
| 📤 `sent` | string | When the alert was issued, with its local UTC offset |
| ▶️ `effective` | string | When the alert takes effect |
| ⏹ `expires` | string | When the alert expires |
| 📰 `headline` | string | The official one line headline, including the issuing office |
| 📋 `instruction` | string | The protective action text the NWS publishes with the alert |
| 📍 `geocode` | object | Area codes for the alert. `SAME` holds FIPS county codes, `UGC` holds forecast zone codes |
| 🕒 `scrapedAt` | string | ISO timestamp of collection |
| ⚠️ `error` | string | `null` on a normal row |

#### Example rows

```json
{
  "id": "urn:oid:2.49.0.1.840.0.7625bdc62d9d4a019b589fac6f706e0df337cb17.001.2",
  "event": "Coastal Flood Advisory",
  "severity": "Minor",
  "urgency": "Expected",
  "certainty": "Likely",
  "area_desc": "Kuskokwim Delta Coast and Nunivak Island",
  "sent": "2026-09-14T08:26:00-08:00",
  "effective": "2026-09-14T08:26:00-08:00",
  "expires": "2026-09-15T07:00:00-08:00",
  "headline": "Coastal Flood Advisory issued September 14 at 8:26AM AKDT until September 16 at 10:00AM AKDT by NWS Anchorage AK",
  "instruction": "A coastal flood advisory indicates that onshore winds and tides\nwill combine to generate flooding of low areas along the shore.\n\n\n-AM",
  "geocode": {
    "SAME": [
      "002050"
    ],
    "UGC": [
      "AKZ755"
    ]
  },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T16:29:16.223Z",
  "error": null
}
```

```json
{
  "id": "urn:oid:2.49.0.1.840.0.192fe0a99e97657cfda64edd8520b15c95abeb4f.001.1",
  "event": "Flood Watch",
  "severity": "Severe",
  "urgency": "Future",
  "certainty": "Possible",
  "area_desc": "Poweshiek; Marion; Lucas; Decatur; Wayne",
  "sent": "2026-09-14T11:24:00-05:00",
  "effective": "2026-09-14T11:24:00-05:00",
  "expires": "2026-09-15T07:30:00-05:00",
  "headline": "Flood Watch issued September 14 at 11:24AM CDT until September 16 at 1:00PM CDT by NWS Des Moines IA",
  "instruction": "For the latest stream observations and forecasts refer to\nweather.gov/desmoines/water.",
  "geocode": {
    "SAME": [
      "019157",
      "019125",
      "019117",
      "019053",
      "019185"
    ],
    "UGC": [
      "IAZ062",
      "IAZ074",
      "IAZ084",
      "IAZ094",
      "IAZ095"
    ]
  },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T16:29:16.303Z",
  "error": null
}
```

### ✨ Why choose this Actor

| | What you get |
|---|---|
| **The official source** | Rows come from the National Weather Service itself, not from a weather app repackaging it. |
| **County codes in the row** | SAME and UGC codes let you join alerts to a site list by county instead of by name. |
| **Four filters, applied at the source** | Area, severity, urgency and event type narrow the run before anything is collected. |
| **Stable columns** | Re-run every hour and append into one dataset without cleaning headers. |
| **You pay per alert** | No subscription. A filter that matches nothing costs nothing. |

### 🚀 How to use it

1. [Create a free Apify account](https://console.apify.com/sign-up). New accounts start with $5 of credit.
2. Open the Actor and select **Try for free**.
3. Set `area` to a state code, or leave it empty for the whole country.
4. Narrow with `severity`, `urgency` or `event`, and set `maxItems` to cap the run.
5. Select **Start**, then export from the **Dataset** tab as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

A first run, everything active:

```json
{
  "severity": "all",
  "urgency": "all",
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

Severe alerts in Texas that are already in effect:

```json
{
  "area": "TX",
  "severity": "Severe",
  "urgency": "Immediate",
  "maxItems": 200
}
```

### ⚙️ Input

| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `area` | No | US state code such as `CA` or `TX`, or a marine area code. Empty covers the country |
| `severity` | No | `all`, `Extreme`, `Severe`, `Moderate`, `Minor` or `Unknown`. Defaults to `all` |
| `urgency` | No | `all`, `Immediate`, `Expected`, `Future`, `Past` or `Unknown`. Defaults to `all` |
| `event` | No | Event type such as `Tornado Warning` or `Flood Watch`. Empty covers every event |
| `maxItems` | No | Maximum alerts to collect in a run. Defaults to 10 |

### 💰 Pricing

Pay per result. No subscription, and no Apify platform usage on top.

| Apify plan | Free | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum | Diamond |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per alert row | $0.0085 | $0.00817 | $0.00783 | $0.0075 | $0.0075 | $0.0075 |

| Rows collected | Cost on the Free plan |
|---|---|
| 100 | $0.85 |
| 1,000 | $8.50 |
| 10,000 | $85.00 |

**Free plan runs** return up to 10 rows as a preview. Any paid Apify plan lifts that to 1,000,000 per run.

### 🔌 Integrate with any app

The dataset is available through the Apify API as soon as the run finishes. Use `run-sync-get-dataset-items` for a one-shot call, webhooks to trigger what happens next, or the Make, Zapier, Airbyte and LangChain integrations listed on the Actor page.

### 🤖 Use with an AI agent

Give an agent live access to the alert feed over the Model Context Protocol:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper"
```

Then ask it in plain language which severe alerts are active in a state and have it read them back.

### ❓ Frequently asked questions

**Does this return historical alerts?**
No. It returns alerts that are active at the moment of the run. To build a history, schedule the Actor and append every run into the same dataset.

**Does it include the full alert narrative?**
It returns the `headline` and the `instruction`. The longer forecast discussion that some alerts carry is not part of the row.

**How do I match an alert to my own locations?**
Use `geocode`. `SAME` holds FIPS county codes and `UGC` holds NWS forecast zone codes, which is what the alert is actually issued against. `area_desc` is the same areas in words.

**Why do the timestamps have different offsets?**
Each alert carries the local offset of the office that issued it, so an Alaska alert reads `-08:00` and an Iowa one reads `-05:00`. `scrapedAt` is always UTC.

**Do I need a proxy?**
No. Requests and retries are handled inside the Actor and included in the price.

**What can I export?**
CSV, Excel, JSON and XML from the run page, or JSON straight from the API.

### 🔗 More from Acquisition Automation Co.

- [USCG PSIX Vessel Registry Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/uscg-psix-vessel-incidents-scraper)
- [SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/sam-gov-contracts-scraper)
- [PublicSurplus Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/publicsurplus-scraper)
- [FTC Actions Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/ftc-actions-scraper)
- [BizBuySell Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/bizbuysell-scraper)

### About Acquisition Automation Co.

We build automation for people buying businesses. The repetitive part of an acquisition search, checking listings, pulling public records, tracking owners and assets, is work a machine should do, so the buyer's time goes into judging deals instead of collecting them.

We add new Actors regularly. If there is a source you need and do not see here, tell us.

### 🆘 Support

Open an issue in the **Issues** tab of this Actor with your run ID, the input you used, and what you expected to get back.

### ⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Weather Service, NOAA or any government agency. It collects only publicly available data and must not be relied on as a life safety warning system. Always follow official alerts from weather.gov and your local authorities.

# Actor input Schema

## `area` (type: `string`):

Filter by US state code (e.g. CA, TX) or marine area code.

## `severity` (type: `string`):

Restrict to one severity level.

## `urgency` (type: `string`):

Restrict to one urgency level.

## `event` (type: `string`):

Filter by event type (e.g. Tornado Warning, Flood Watch).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of alerts to collect per run.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "severity": "all",
  "urgency": "all",
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxItems": 10
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "maxItems": 10 }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxItems": 10
}' |
apify call acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,acquistion-automation/nws-active-alerts-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/7wshXdS5BIbdjEkcv/builds/rgD1Ookt79f9STA0S/openapi.json