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

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