NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper

Extract active U.S. National Weather Service alerts in real time from api.weather.gov. Filter by state, severity, urgency, event type, status, and message type. Get structured JSON ready for emergency response dashboards, insurance loss models, logistics rerouting, and weather-aware AI agents.

What this Actor does

The U.S. National Weather Service publishes a live feed of all active alerts (Tornado Warnings, Flood Watches, Winter Storm Warnings, Heat Advisories, etc.) via the official api.weather.gov GeoJSON API. This Actor fetches the live feed, filters it server-side and client-side, and pushes a flat, analytics-ready record per alert.

Output fields include:

Field	Description
id	Unique alert identifier (URN)
event	Alert event type (e.g. "Tornado Warning")
headline	Short alert headline
areaDesc	Human-readable affected area
affectedZones	Array of NWS zone URIs
senderName	Issuing office (e.g. "NWS Norman OK")
sent, effective, onset, expires, ends	ISO timestamps
status	Actual, Exercise, System, Test
messageType	Alert, Update, Cancel
category, severity, certainty, urgency	CAP categorization
response	Recommended action (Shelter, Evacuate, etc.)
description, instruction	Full alert text
hasGeometry, geometryType	Whether the alert has GeoJSON polygon data

How to scrape NWS weather alerts

1. Click Try for free to add this Actor to your Apify account.
2. Configure filters (all optional):
   • Area — two-letter U.S. state/territory code (CA, TX, FL, etc.)
   • Severity — Extreme, Severe, Moderate, Minor, Unknown
   • Urgency — Immediate, Expected, Future, Past, Unknown
   • Event Type — partial match (e.g. Tornado, Flood, Heat)
   • Status / Message Type
   • Max Results — 0 for unlimited
3. Click Start. The Actor returns matching active alerts.

Pricing

• $0.003 per result.
• A typical full-US run (200–500 active alerts) costs $0.60–$1.50.
• Single-state runs are usually under $0.10.

Example input

{
  "area": "TX",
  "severity": "Severe",
  "event": "Thunderstorm",
  "maxResults": 200
}

Example output

{
  "id": "urn:oid:2.49.0.1.840.0...",
  "event": "Severe Thunderstorm Warning",
  "severity": "Severe",
  "urgency": "Immediate",
  "areaDesc": "Harris, TX; Liberty, TX",
  "headline": "Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued May 22...",
  "effective": "2026-05-22T09:45:00-05:00",
  "expires": "2026-05-22T10:30:00-05:00",
  "senderName": "NWS Houston/Galveston TX",
  "response": "Shelter"
}

Use cases

• Emergency operations centers — pull state-filtered alerts into ops dashboards.
• Logistics & trucking — reroute fleets around severe weather corridors.
• Insurance — track Extreme/Severe events for claim-volume forecasting.
• AI weather agents — feed structured alerts into LLM pipelines for natural-language warnings.
• Property management — alert tenants and crews ahead of severe weather.

Other Actors

• noaa-storm-events-scraper — historical storm event database
• noaa-ncei-climate-scraper — climate datasets
• fema-disasters-scraper — federal disaster declarations

FAQ

How fresh is the data? Live. The Actor calls api.weather.gov/alerts/active on every run, which is updated as soon as NWS issues, updates, or cancels alerts.

What happens during quiet weather? If the filters match no currently active alerts, the Actor emits one informational record explaining the empty result rather than failing.

Do I need an API key? No — api.weather.gov is open and free for compliant use. The Actor sends a descriptive User-Agent as NWS requires.

Why not pull historical alerts? Use noaa-storm-events-scraper for historical events. This Actor is for currently active alerts only.

Legal

This Actor only retrieves public, non-personal data from a U.S. federal government source. Use the data in compliance with NWS terms and applicable laws. The Actor is provided "as is" without warranty. For questions, contact the Actor maintainer through Apify Console.