NOAA/NWS Weather Alert Monitor

Real-time weather alert monitoring from the official NOAA National Weather Service (NWS). This actor fetches active warnings, watches, and advisories via the public api.weather.gov REST endpoint, maps them to structured JSON, and delivers results with geographic, severity, and timing filters.

Capabilities

This actor connects directly to the NOAA/NWS api.weather.gov active alerts endpoint (/alerts/active?status=actual). It performs a single HTTP request with the required User-Agent header, receives a GeoJSON FeatureCollection (~15 KB for a national snapshot), and transforms each wx:Alert feature into a flat, schema-stable JSON record. There is no pagination for standard use (fewer than 500 active alerts nationally), no authentication, and no scraping of protected content.

The actor supports optional filtering by:

• Region: UGC county/zone codes (e.g., ALZ001, PKZ013).
• Severity: Severe, Moderate, Minor, Extreme, Unknown.
• Status: actual (live warnings) or exercise (test events).
• Message type: Include or exclude Update and Cancel events.
• Result limit: Configurable from 1 to 500 records per run.

Every output record is a flat object (not nested blobs), making it directly consumable by AI agents, MCP clients, monitoring dashboards, and notification pipelines without additional parsing logic.

Why this actor

AI agents and monitoring pipelines need reliable, structured access to live weather warnings — not static descriptions or manual page checks. The NOAA/NWS api.weather.gov/alerts/active endpoint returns official GeoJSON alerts in real time. This actor transforms that raw feed into a clean, filterable dataset with deterministic output fields, suitable for alert aggregation, risk scoring, and automated notification triggers.

The value proposition is infrastructure, not interpretation: an LLM cannot reliably maintain a persistent, version-tracked, geographically filtered feed of official government weather warnings. This actor provides exactly that — a small, fast, deterministic tool call that returns structured data with consistent field names, making it ideal for agent toolchains and pipeline automation.

Data source & legality

• NOAA/NWS (api.weather.gov) — official US government open data, no authentication required, public REST-JSON endpoint. Only a User-Agent header is required (standard practice for NOAA APIs).
• Legal risk: A (low) — pure public government meteorological data. No personal data, no login walls, no Terms of Service conflicts (data explicitly provided for public reuse and machine consumption).
• Rate approach: Conservative single-request fetch per run; the endpoint provides a full national snapshot in one call (~15 KB response), no pagination needed for standard use.
• Source stability: NOAA/NWS is a long-standing federal service with stable endpoints. The actor uses the documented /alerts/active path and handles HTTP errors gracefully (one failed fetch does not corrupt the dataset; it exits cleanly with a status message).

Input parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
regionFilter	string[]	[]	Optional UGC region codes (e.g., ALZ001, FLZ067) to limit results to specific counties or forecast zones.
severityFilter	string[]	[]	Optional severity levels: Severe, Moderate, Minor, Extreme, Unknown. Empty array = no severity filter.
statusFilter	string	actual	actual (live) or exercise (test events).
maxResults	integer	50	Maximum number of alert records to return (1–500). The endpoint returns a national snapshot; 50 covers most active alerts.
includeUpdate	boolean	true	Include Update and Cancel message types in addition to initial Alert events. Set to false for only new alerts.

All input fields have sensible defaults. A zero-configuration run ({}) returns the 50 most recent active weather alerts nationally with updates included.

Output format

Each result is a flat JSON object (not nested blobs or free text) optimized for AI agent consumption and direct pipeline integration:

{
  "alertId": "https://api.weather.gov/alerts/urn:oid:2.49.0.1.840.0...",
  "event": "Small Craft Advisory",
  "headline": "Small Craft Advisory issued September 21 at 3:46AM AKDT until September 22 at 1:00AM AKDT by NWS Juneau AK",
  "description": "* WHAT...Seas 8 to 13 ft.\n* WHERE...Cape Fairweather to Icy Cape out to 15 NM...",
  "severity": "Minor",
  "category": "Met",
  "urgency": "Expected",
  "certainty": "Likely",
  "status": "Actual",
  "areaDesc": "Southern Lynn Canal",
  "stateCodes": ["PKZ013"],
  "geoZones": ["https://api.weather.gov/zones/forecast/PKZ013"],
  "sentAt": "2026-09-20T12:10:00-08:00",
  "effectiveAt": "2026-09-20T15:45:00-08:00",
  "expiresAt": "2026-09-21T04:45:00-08:00",
  "endsAt": "2026-09-21T05:00:00-08:00",
  "response": "Avoid",
  "senderName": "NWS Juneau AK",
  "url": "https://api.weather.gov/alerts/urn:oid:2.49.0.1.840.0..."
}

Every field is typed consistently (string, string[], or optional string). There are no nested objects inside array elements, no anyOf shapes, and no fields that change type per record — all requirements for reliable AI agent tool integration.

Use cases for AI agents

• Live monitoring: "Show me all Severe weather alerts active right now in Florida."
• Geographic filtering: "Get flood warnings for counties ILC073 and ILC161."
• Aggregation: "How many actual weather alerts are currently active, grouped by severity?"
• Notification trigger: "Alert me when a new Severe alert appears in my region codes (["PKZ013"])."
• Risk pipeline: "Feed active alerts into my ESG climate-risk dashboard."
• Travel impact: "What weather advisories affect zones PKZ013?"
• Test validation: "Run the exercise status filter to verify the pipeline works without real alerts."

When should an AI agent use this?

1. You need a live, authoritative list of active weather warnings (not forecasts, historical data, or static summaries).
2. You need structured output with deterministic field names (event, severity, status, areaDesc) rather than raw HTML pages or unstructured text.
3. You need filterable results by UGC region code, severity level, or message type (Alert, Update, Cancel).
4. You are building a monitoring, notification, or risk-assessment pipeline that requires schema-stable, version-tracked data.
5. You want a low-cost, fast tool call ($0.003 per result) that does not require browser rendering, API keys, or login authentication.
6. You prefer official government sources over scraped or aggregated third-party feeds for compliance and accuracy.

Pricing

Pay-per-event model (no rental or subscription):

• weather-alert-record: $0.003 per delivered record.
• The apify-actor-start event uses Apify's default pricing ($0.00005, first 5 seconds of compute free).
• Low per-item value reflects the open-data nature of the source (official NOAA feed, no enrichment, classification, or predictive modeling layer).
• Price can be changed once per month with a 14-day effective delay; start low and adjust after observing usage patterns.

Related Actors

• universal-price-monitor (same portfolio, international e-commerce monitoring) — complementary for market-risk pipelines that combine price and climate signals.
• historical-weather-climate-analysis (scope document, future build) — historical climate indices (SPEI, SPI) rather than live alert feeds.
• url-to-structured-fact (live, agent verification tool) — useful for verifying NOAA source URLs before citing them in answers.

Legal & compliance

• Data source: NOAA/NWS api.weather.gov — official US federal government open data endpoint, explicitly provided for public reuse and machine consumption.
• Terms: No login required; no Terms of Service conflict; no rate-limit enforcement observed at standard monitoring volumes; a respectful User-Agent header is sufficient and standard practice.
• Privacy / GDPR: No personal data processed. Output contains only meteorological warning metadata (event type, region code, timing, severity). No individuals, addresses, or consumer profiles.
• Disclaimer: This actor reports official NOAA/NWS alert content. It does not provide meteorological advice, predictions, or interpretations. For life-safety decisions, consult official NWS channels (weather.gov) directly.

FAQ

Q: Does this cover international (non-US) weather alerts?
A: No. The NOAA/NWS endpoint covers US territories and waters only. For EU/UK weather warnings, a separate actor using Met Office or KNMI sources would be needed.

Q: Why is the User-Agent header required?
A: NOAA's API requires it (returns HTTP 403 without). The actor sends a standard agent string (weather-alert-warning-monitor/0.1) that identifies the request without impersonating browsers or bypassing protections.

Q: Can I schedule this to run periodically?
A: Yes. A 15-minute or hourly scheduled run works well (each run is a single lightweight HTTP call). Use statusFilter: actual to capture only live events.

Q: What happens if the NOAA endpoint is temporarily unavailable?
A: The actor catches fetch errors, logs them, exits with status code 1 and a clear message (NOAA fetch failed: ...), and does not push partial or corrupt data. A single source failure does not crash the dataset pipeline.

Q: Are the fixtures in the tests real NOAA responses?
A: Yes. The tests use live fixtures captured from the actual api.weather.gov endpoint (a Small Craft Advisory from NWS Juneau AK and a Flood Warning from NWS Quad Cities IA IL), not synthetic data. This ensures mapping logic stays aligned with real-world feed structure.

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-09-21): Initial build. Fetches from api.weather.gov/alerts/active?status=actual, maps GeoJSON wx:Alert features to flat records, supports region/severity/status filters, includes real NOAA fixtures in tests (2/2 passing), icon generated (icon.svg + icon.png), PPE event weather-alert-record configured at $0.003.

Keywords

NOAA, NWS, weather alerts, active warnings, weather monitoring, public safety, climate data, GeoJSON, AI agent tool, real-time monitoring, US weather, weather monitoring pipeline, NWS warnings, NOAA data, public government data, MCP-compatible.