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Public Information Statement 24-66 Updated
National Weather Service Headquarters Silver Spring MD
1000 AM EST Wed Dec 4 2024

To: Subscribers:
 -NOAA Weather Wire Service
 -Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
 -NOAAPort
 Other NWS Partners, Users and Employees

From: George Jungbluth
 Director, Office of Dissemination

Subject: Updated: Potential API Gridded Forecast Data Outage
from December 22, 2024 through January 1, 2025

Updated to inform users of a one-hour live test of the
Application Programming Interface (API) software planned to
start at approximately 1230 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on
Thursday, December 5, 2024.

The Office of Dissemination (DIS) and the National Centers for
Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations (NCO) continue
to work on fixing a critical bug that disrupts the dissemination
of gridded forecast data via the NWS Application Programming
Interface (API) near the end of the calendar year.  The software
development team has engineered a fix that will be tested live
for one hour on the morning of Thursday December 5.  Status
messages will be posted to
https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/status/messages/ to inform users
when the test begins and ends.During this test, users may
experience slightly different results in forecast information.
At the conclusion of the one-hour test, the previous version of
the software will be restored. Users are asked to report any
issues, including any degraded performance, to NCEP Central
Operations Tech Control at nco.ops@noaa.gov.

In the event that this test is not successful and the bug fix
cannot be implemented before December 22, technicians will
disable the API gridpoints endpoint and gridded forecast data
will not be available between December 22, 2024 through January
1, 2025.  This updated Public Information Statement is intended
to inform users of this potential outage and offer alternatives
to help reduce the impact to customers.

When this problem occurs, users will experience errors when
making requests to the API for gridded forecast data.  Below are
examples of the types of requests that will fail:

https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/PQR/107,99/forecast
https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/SGX/59,65/forecast/hourly

The response returned to the user will be similar to this:
{
"correlationId": "eb6a80a",
"title": "Service
Unavailable",
"type": "https://api.weather.gov/problems/ServiceUnavailable",
"status": 503,
"detail": "An upstream data source is temporarily unavailable.
Please try again later.",
"instance": "https://api.weather.gov/requests/eb6a80a"
}

The following alternatives may help users reduce the impact of this
data
outage. Using the forecast.weather.gov Web Service:

The forecast for a location is available via a single call to
forecast.weather.gov using the latitude and longitude
coordinates for that location:

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=$LAT&lon=$LON&FcstTy
pe=$FOR MAT

where $LAT and $LON are in decimal degrees and $FORMAT is either
DWML or JSON.

Example:

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=39.5&lon=-
94.5&FcstType=dwml

Using the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) Web Service:
The forecast for a location is available in various formats via
requests to web services that deliver NDFD data.  Details on what
services are available and how to use them can be found at:

https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/mdl/ndfd

To report problems or operational issues with the API or
forecast.weather.gov applications, please contact:

NCEP Central Operations Tech
Control nco.ops@noaa.gov

To report problems or issues related with the NDFD web services,
please contact:
nws.ndfd@noaa.gov

Please send all other comments and questions to:
nws.webfeedback@noaa.gov

National Public Information Statements are online at:

https://www.weather.gov/notification/