Severe Weather API - Xweather Lightning, Alerts, Storms, Fires

Pull real-time lightning strikes, official weather alerts, tornado and hail storm reports, radar storm cells, hurricanes, wildfires and air quality from the Xweather Weather API with your own credentials, as clean dataset rows.

Works with the official Xweather Weather API (formerly AerisWeather, by Vaisala) on data.api.xweather.com. The actor turns places, US states or ocean basins into deduplicated rows you can download as JSON, CSV or Excel, schedule every few minutes, or feed into storm alerting, field operations, insurance and claims triage, outdoor event safety, logistics, Google Sheets and AI agents. Bring your own API key.

BYOK, not live-tested: every endpoint, action, parameter and filter comes from Xweather's public Weather API documentation, and the host and authentication scheme were confirmed against data.api.xweather.com, but the actor has not been run against a live Xweather account.

What it does

• Weather alerts: active warnings, watches and advisories for any place from the US National Weather Service, Environment Canada, MeteoAlarm (Europe), the UK Met Office, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and more, with type code, priority, begin and expiry times, full text, affected counties, zones and zip codes. Filter by group (severe, tornado, flood, winter, tropical, fire...) or VTEC code (TO.W, SV.W, FF.W).
• Lightning strikes: recent cloud-to-ground strikes or intracloud pulses around a place, from the Vaisala global lightning network, with time, coordinates, peak amperage and polarity, sensor count, and distance and bearing from your place.
• Storm reports: local storm reports for tornadoes, hail, wind damage, floods, snow, ice and more, around a place or across a US state, with magnitude (hail size, wind speed, rain or snow amount), reporter and comments.
• Radar storm cells: live storm cells with hail probability and maximum hail size, rotation (MDA), tornadic vortex signature, movement and forecast track.
• Tropical cyclones: every active hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm and invest worldwide, or per basin, with position, category, sustained wind, pressure, movement, historical track and forecast track.
• Active wildfires: fires around a place or in a US state, with area, containment, cause and perimeter when available.
• Air quality: current AQI, category, dominant pollutant and per-pollutant readings for any place, on the US AirNow scale or the European, UK, German, Chinese, Indian or Korean index.
• Pay only for results: refused and empty lookups are recorded as a free row that says why, never charged. Overlapping search areas are deduplicated by record id.

How to get an API key

Sign up on xweather.com (a free developer plan with a monthly access allowance is offered, then paid Weather API plans), open your account, register an app, and copy its client ID and client secret. Paste them into the Client ID and Client secret fields, or put client_id:client_secret in the Client ID field alone, or set the DATA_API_KEY environment secret to client_id:client_secret. Both values are stored as secrets, sent only to data.api.xweather.com as the documented client_id and client_secret parameters, and never logged.

Xweather ties each app to a namespace (a domain or bundle id). If the API answers unauthorized_namespace, register an app meant for server side requests and use its credentials. Lightning beyond the last 5 minutes or 100 km needs the Lightning Enterprise add-on, and some endpoints are only on higher plans; a refusal ends the run cleanly with Xweather's own words.

Input

Field	Modes	Description
mode	all	alerts, lightning, stormReports, stormCells, tropicalCyclones, fires or airQuality
locations	all but tropical cyclones	minneapolis,mn, paris,fr, 55403, MSP, MNZ029 or 32.97,-87.28
states	storm reports, storm cells, wildfires	Two letter US state codes
radius, radiusUnit	lightning, storm reports, storm cells, wildfires	Search radius in miles or km (max 500 km)
fromTime, toTime	lightning (from), storm reports	-5minutes, -24hours, -7days, now, or a date such as 2026-10-01
lightningType	lightning	cg (default), ic or all
alertFilters, alertTypeCodes	alerts	Alert groups, VTEC codes such as TO.W
stormReportTypes	storm reports	tornado, hail, wind, flood, snow...
stormCellTypes	storm cells	hail, rotating, tornado, threat...
basin	tropical cyclones	atlantic, eastpacific, westpacific, indian, southern, invests...
perimeterOnly	wildfires	Only fires with a mapped perimeter
aqiStandard	air quality	airnow (default), eaqi, caqi, uk, germany, china, india, cai
maxResults	all	Row ceiling for the run (default 100)
requestsPerMinute	all	Pacing, default 60
clientId, clientSecret	all	Your Xweather app credentials

Example: tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings for two places.

{
    "mode": "alerts",
    "locations": ["minneapolis,mn", "oklahoma city,ok"],
    "alertFilters": ["severe"]
}

Example output

An illustrative lightning row, shaped like Xweather's documented /lightning response (values are an example, not real data). Every field Xweather returns is kept.

{
    "mode": "lightning",
    "recordType": "lightning",
    "identifier": "32.97,-87.28",
    "found": true,
    "recordId": "6835db25f31314afcf8bb8c5",
    "eventTime": "2026-10-15T15:32:14+00:00",
    "eventType": "cg",
    "headline": "Cloud-to-ground lightning, -7000 A",
    "magnitude": -7000,
    "magnitudeUnit": "peak amperes",
    "latitude": 32.9001,
    "longitude": -87.3311,
    "distanceKm": 9.119,
    "loc": { "long": -87.3311, "lat": 32.9001 },
    "ob": {
        "timestamp": 1792078334,
        "dateTimeISO": "2026-10-15T15:32:14+00:00",
        "age": 113,
        "pulse": { "type": "cg", "peakamp": -7000, "numSensors": 5, "chiSquare": 11.82 }
    },
    "relativeTo": { "lat": 32.97, "long": -87.28, "bearing": 212, "bearingENG": "SSW", "distanceKM": 9.119, "distanceMI": 5.666 },
    "retrievedAt": "2026-10-15T15:34:07.000Z",
    "note": null
}

Alert rows carry details (type, name, priority, body text), timestamps and includes (counties, zones, zip codes); storm report rows carry report; storm cell rows carry ob, forecast and traits; cyclone rows carry profile, position, track and forecast; fire rows carry report and perimeter; air quality rows carry periods with pollutants.

FAQ

What is the Xweather Weather API?

Xweather is the weather data business of Vaisala, formerly AerisWeather. Its Weather API on data.api.xweather.com serves conditions, forecasts, lightning from the Vaisala global lightning network, official alerts, storm reports, radar storm cells, tropical cyclones, wildfires, air quality and more, authenticated with a client ID and client secret.

Do I need my own Xweather account?

Yes. This is a bring-your-own-key actor: it calls Xweather with your credentials, under your Xweather plan and terms. Missing, rejected or exhausted credentials end the run cleanly with a status message that explains what to change, and nothing is charged.

How do I get lightning strikes near a location?

Use Lightning strikes near a place with a place such as 32.97,-87.28 and a radius of up to 100 km. Standard access returns strikes from the last 5 minutes, up to 1000 per request, paged with skip; Xweather's Lightning Enterprise add-on extends this to 24 hours per query, archive data back to 2016 and a 500 km radius.

Which weather alerts are covered?

The alerts endpoint returns active alerts from the US NWS, Environment Canada, MeteoAlarm, the UK Met Office, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and other national services covering India, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea and Mexico. Each row includes the VTEC or Xweather type code, priority, color, issue, begin and expiry times and the full alert text.

Can I monitor tornadoes and hail?

Yes. Storm cells with the tornado or hail filter return live radar cells with a tornadic vortex signature or a high hail probability; Storm reports with the tornado or hail type return confirmed local storm reports; alerts with the tornado group return tornado watches and warnings.

How do I track hurricanes?

Use Tropical cyclones. With no basin it lists every active hurricane, typhoon and tropical storm worldwide, each with current position, category, wind, pressure, past track and forecast track. Pick invests for areas under investigation.

What do I pay?

Pay per result: 0.005 USD per lightning strike, and 0.01 USD per alert, storm report, storm cell, tropical cyclone, wildfire or air quality reading. Refused and empty lookups are never charged. Your Xweather plan is billed separately by Xweather and counts accesses by its own token multipliers (for example lightning costs more per request on standard access); the run log reports the X-Cost-Tokens total.

What happens if my credentials are wrong or my limit runs out?

An invalid_client answer (HTTP 401), an unauthorized_namespace or insufficient_scope refusal, or a maxhits or maxhits_daily answer (access limit used up) ends the run cleanly with Xweather's own words. The per minute limit (maxhits_min, HTTP 429) is waited out and retried. A place Xweather cannot find becomes a free row with the API's message, and the run moves on.

Pricing

Event	Price	Charged for
lightning-record	0.005 USD	Each lightning pulse
weather-event-record	0.01 USD	Each alert, storm report, storm cell, tropical cyclone, wildfire or air quality reading

Keyword map

severe weather API, lightning API, lightning strike data, lightning detection, weather alerts API, NWS alerts, tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, storm reports, hail data, hail size, radar storm cells, tornado tracking, hurricane tracker API, tropical cyclone data, wildfire API, active fires, air quality API, AQI by location, Xweather API, AerisWeather API, Vaisala weather data.

Terms and data use

Use of Xweather is governed by the Vaisala Group General Conditions of Subscription Services (linked from xweather.com/legal) and any service description for your plan. They grant a limited, non-transferable licence to use the data for your own internal business purposes during your subscription, and forbid selling, sublicensing, distributing, publishing or otherwise making the data available to third parties unless your service description allows it; where sharing is allowed, Vaisala attribution is required. Free and trial plans are for internal use only, with commercial use prohibited. On expiry or termination you must stop using and delete the data. Run this actor with your own credentials, keep the results for your own internal use, and contact Xweather before republishing or reselling the data. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Vaisala or Xweather.