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Public Information Statement 24-66 Updated
National Weather Service Headquarters Silver Spring MD
145 PM EST Mon Nov 25 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 the potential for a temporary outage of
the
API Gridded Forecast Data from December 22, 2024 through January 1,
2025.

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.  While we still hope to
avoid
this outage, it is becoming more likely that the outage will occur.
In the event that 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&FcstType=
$
FORMAT

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/