ESWD Severe Weather Events Scraper

ESWD Severe Weather Events Scraper

Extracts real-time severe weather event reports from the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD) — no account required — and returns structured JSON with event type, location, date, coordinates, and source attribution.

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Key Highlights

• No account or cookies needed — scrapes the public ESWD database directly via API
• User-friendly filters — select time range, event type (hail, wind, tornado, lightning, rain), and country
• Precise location data — latitude, longitude, accuracy radius, city, and country for every event
• Structured output — clean JSON with ISO dates, coordinate pairs, and source attribution
• Supports all ESWD event types: large hail, severe wind, damaging lightning, tornado, heavy rain
• Advanced override — supply a raw base64 payload for custom filter configurations

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What data does it extract?

Each result contains:

Event info: weather (formatted label), eventTypeRaw (HAIL/WIND/LIGHTNING/TORNADO/PRECIP), eventDate (YYYY-MM-DD), eventTime (HH:MM UTC)

Location: city, state, country, latitude, longitude, radius (km accuracy), location (full readable string)

Hail-specific: maxHailDiameter (cm, HAIL events only)

Source: source (contact and reference attribution from ESWD)

Raw: locationRaw (HTML-formatted location block as shown on ESWD website)

Output is available as JSON, CSV, or Excel via Apify dataset export.

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Use cases

• Weather monitoring: Track severe weather events across Europe in near real-time for alerts or dashboards
• Insurance & risk: Enrich property risk models with historical severe weather occurrence data by location
• Research & journalism: Download structured event records for meteorological analysis or news reporting
• Emergency management: Monitor event types and locations for operational awareness and response planning
• Agriculture: Identify hail and wind events near specific regions to assess crop damage risk
• Academic: Build datasets of European severe weather occurrences for climate research

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How to use

1. Click Try for free above
2. In the Input tab, set your Time Range Amount and Time Range Unit (e.g., 2 and Days for the past 48 hours)
3. Optionally filter by Event Types (e.g., select HAIL and TORNADO) and Countries (e.g., Germany, France)
4. Set Max Items to limit results, or leave at 0 for all events
5. Click Start — a typical run completes in under 30 seconds
6. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Output tab

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Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
timeAmount	Integer	No	2	How many time units to look back. Combined with timeUnit (e.g., 2 + d = last 2 days). Range: 1-365.
timeUnit	String	No	"d"	Time unit. Options: h (hours), d (days), w (weeks), m (months).
eventTypes	Array	No	[] (all)	Event type filter. Options: HAIL, WIND, LIGHTNING, TORNADO, PRECIP. Leave empty for all.
countries	Array	No	[] (all)	Country name filter as it appears on ESWD (e.g., "Germany", "France"). Leave empty for all.
maxItems	Integer	No	0 (unlimited)	Maximum events to save. 0 = no limit.
includeDeleted	Boolean	No	false	Include events deleted from the ESWD database.
rawPayload	String	No	—	Advanced: base64-encoded ESWD payload overriding all other inputs. Leave empty to use fields above.

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Output example

{
  "weather": "large hail",
  "eventTypeRaw": "HAIL",
  "eventDate": "2025-06-12",
  "eventTime": "14:30 UTC",
  "maxHailDiameter": "3.5",
  "city": "Stuttgart",
  "state": "Baden-Wurttemberg",
  "country": "Germany",
  "latitude": "48.78",
  "longitude": "9.18",
  "radius": "3",
  "location": "Stuttgart Germany (48.78 N, 9.18 E) < 3 km (Thursday)14:30 UTC (+/- 30 min.)",
  "locationRaw": "<p>MaxHailDiameter:3.5 cm</p><p class=HAIL><b>Stuttgart</b> Germany (48.78 N, 9.18 E)</p>",
  "source": "based on information from: J. Mueller https://eswd.eu/report/12345"
}

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Pricing

This Actor is free to use — you only pay for Apify platform compute time.

A typical run fetching 2 days of Europe-wide events (100-500 records) costs approximately $0.01-$0.05 in Apify platform credits.

New Apify accounts receive $5 in free credits — enough for hundreds of runs.

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Technical notes

• No authentication required: ESWD events are publicly accessible — no login or API key needed
• API-based: The scraper calls ESWD internal data API directly — fast and reliable
• Endpoint stability: The ESWD API endpoint may change if the site is rebuilt. If results stop returning, please report it.
• Time accuracy: Event times carry a +/- 30 minute margin as reported by ESWD
• Location accuracy: The radius field reflects ESWD place accuracy (typically 1-25 km)
• Countries format: Use two-letter ISO codes (e.g., "DE", "FR", "IT")
• Empty results: If no events match your filters, try widening the time range or removing filters

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Integrations

Output datasets work with any tool that accepts JSON or CSV:

• REST API: Trigger runs and retrieve data programmatically via the Apify API
• Make (Integromat): Use the Apify Make module to send event data to any connected app
• Zapier: Connect Actor runs to 5,000+ apps via the Apify Zapier integration
• n8n: Automate weather event pipelines with the Apify n8n node
• Excel / Google Sheets: Export dataset directly as CSV and import

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Support

Have questions or found a bug? Reach out:

• Email: ScrapySpider@protonmail.com
• Website: ScrapySpider.com
• Apify: Open a support issue on this Actor page
• Response time: Within 24-48 hours on weekdays