Weather Alerts Tracker

Track active severe weather alerts from NOAA National Weather Service: tornado warnings, hurricane watches, flood advisories, winter storms, and more. Filter by US state, county, event type, or severity. Uses NWS public API. No API key required.

Features

• Real-time NOAA/NWS data — pulls directly from the official api.weather.gov public API
• No API key needed — the NWS API is completely free and open
• Filter by state — monitor one state, a handful, or the entire US
• Filter by event type — e.g. Tornado Warning, Hurricane Watch, Flash Flood Warning
• Filter by severity — Extreme, Severe, Moderate, Minor
• Active-only mode — skip already-expired alerts automatically
• PPE pricing — pay only $0.001 per alert returned

Input

Field	Type	Description
states	string[]	US state abbreviations to monitor (e.g. ["TX", "FL"]). Leave empty for all states.
eventTypes	string[]	Event types to include (e.g. ["Tornado Warning", "Flash Flood Warning"]). Leave empty for all.
severity	string[]	Severity levels: Extreme, Severe, Moderate, Minor, Unknown. Leave empty for all.
activeOnly	boolean	Only return alerts that have not yet expired (default: true).

Example Input

{
  "states": ["TX", "OK", "KS"],
  "eventTypes": ["Tornado Warning", "Tornado Watch"],
  "severity": ["Extreme", "Severe"],
  "activeOnly": true
}

Output

Each alert is saved to the Apify dataset with the following fields:

Field	Description
id	Unique NWS alert identifier
event	Event type (e.g. "Tornado Warning")
headline	Short alert headline
area_description	Human-readable description of the affected area
states_affected	List of 2-letter state codes derived from UGC zone codes
severity	Severity level (Extreme/Severe/Moderate/Minor/Unknown)
certainty	Certainty of the event
urgency	Urgency level
status	Alert status (Actual/Exercise/System/Test/Draft)
sent_at	ISO 8601 timestamp when the alert was issued
effective_at	ISO 8601 timestamp when the alert becomes effective
expires_at	ISO 8601 timestamp when the alert expires
description	Full alert description (first 1,000 characters)
instruction	Recommended protective actions (first 500 characters)
response_type	Recommended response type

Example Output

{
  "id": "urn:oid:2.49.0.1.840.0.abc123",
  "event": "Tornado Warning",
  "headline": "Tornado Warning issued for Smith County until 6:45 PM CDT",
  "area_description": "Smith County in East Texas",
  "states_affected": ["TX"],
  "severity": "Extreme",
  "certainty": "Observed",
  "urgency": "Immediate",
  "status": "Actual",
  "sent_at": "2026-05-01T23:30:00-05:00",
  "effective_at": "2026-05-01T23:30:00-05:00",
  "expires_at": "2026-05-01T23:45:00-05:00",
  "description": "At 6:30 PM CDT, a confirmed tornado was located near...",
  "instruction": "TAKE COVER NOW! Move to a basement or an interior room...",
  "response_type": "Shelter"
}

Use Cases

• Emergency management — monitor active alerts across specific jurisdictions
• Travel & logistics — check severe weather before dispatching routes
• Insurance & risk — assess real-time exposure in US states
• News & media — automated alert feed for weather journalists
• Smart home / IoT — trigger automations when warnings hit your area

Data Source

All data comes from the NOAA National Weather Service API, a US government public service. Data is real-time and updated continuously by NWS forecasters. No rate limits for reasonable use.

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing:

Event	Price
Alert fetched	$0.001 per alert

A nationwide sweep typically returns 50–500 alerts depending on current weather conditions. During major events (hurricanes, outbreak days) this can reach 1,000+.

Technical Notes

• Up to 3 states: parallel API requests for speed
• 4+ states or empty: single nationwide /alerts/active request with client-side filtering
• Duplicate alerts from overlapping state fetches are automatically de-duplicated
• The NWS API requires a User-Agent header — this Actor sets it correctly

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Related actors

• Energy Prices Tracker — WTI crude and natural gas prices that correlate with weather-driven energy demand spikes
• NOAA/EIA Energy Data — Natural gas and electricity supply data affected by severe weather events in this actor
• OSM Geocoder — Geocode affected areas to map alert zones onto geographic coordinates

Feedback

If this actor helps your weather monitoring, a review helps others find it: Leave a review on Apify Store

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Keywords: NOAA weather alerts scraper, NWS severe weather tracker, tornado warning data, hurricane watch API, flood advisory monitor, winter storm alerts, US weather emergency tracker, National Weather Service API, severe weather data automation, weather alert feed scraper, real-time weather warnings, weather alert by state, county weather alerts, no API key required