NOAA Weather API - Climate Normals

[javila]

Hi everyone,

Feel like this may be a question relevant to a lot of us. I'm looking to pull annual zip code level data on climate normals from NOAA. However, when I go to access the data it looks like there's nothing there regardless of whether I try and look at yearly, monthly, or daily and the API appears to be working correctly. I tried pulling location categories and data types in addition to the data itself and keep getting the same result. Workflow is below sans my token.

Does anybody have experience doing something along these lines? Am I doing something incorrectly, or if not, does anybody have recommendations on where I can find data like this? I read through a ton of other community posts and can't quite figure it out. 

Thanks in advance for the support!!

You guys rock,

Javi

[Inactive User]

Your URL is incorrect. Anything following the endpoint is a variable and cannot use a "/". You must use a Question mark, "?". I tried it for https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/api/v2/locationcategories?NORMAL_MLY and it worked first try.

[javila]

That's odd as in their documentation it seems to explicitly tell you to use a "/" to fetch more information about a location category specific to a dataset like CLIM_REG (see screenshot below). 

I really appreciate the input but what I'm trying to do is pull in zip level data from the NORMAL_ANN and NORMAL_MLY datasets. I was thinking something like this URL might work:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/api/v2/data?datasetid=NORMAL_ANN&locationcategories=ZIP

But no luck. It's my first time using this api so if its something simple please bear with me. 

Or if that's not possible to pull that for all zips at once, I guess I'll have to create a macro to go through and pull that data for each zip then aggregate it. Just trying to find the simplest solution. 

[Nate1]

Hi @javila,

If you open the data tab on the documentation, locationcategories isn't a valid additional parameter. You can string together multiple zips in one call. Depending on how much data you are pulling back your idea for a macro might still be a better idea.

Good Luck!

[javila · Accepted solution]

Thanks guys! Should have probably spent more time in the documentation. But I got it sorted out and created a batch macro (attached). Still needs a little ironing out but works for the most part. 

[SGriggs]

Hi Javila,

Where do you put your token ID within the macro? When I run it I get a message that says "token parameter is required'

[SGriggs]

Nevermind.... its in the web connector ... duh