Nws Search Alerts
nws_search_alertsRead-only
Search active weather alerts (watches, warnings, advisories) across the US. Filter by state, coordinates, zone, land/marine region, event type, severity, urgency, or certainty. area, point, zone, region_type, and region are mutually exclusive — provide at most one. Omit all filters for a national search.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| area | No | US state/territory code (e.g., "WA", "OK", "PR") or marine area code (e.g., "GM"). Mutually exclusive with point and zone. | |
| zone | No | NWS forecast zone (e.g., "WAZ558") or county zone (e.g., "WAC033"). Mutually exclusive with area and point. | |
| event | No | Filter to specific event types (e.g., ["Tornado Warning"]). Matches are case-insensitive and partial, so "tornado" matches both "Tornado Warning" and "Tornado Watch". Use nws_list_alert_types to discover valid names. | |
| limit | No | Maximum number of alerts to include in this page (1-25, default 25). totalCount still reports the full number of distinct matches, so a small limit returns a digest of broad or national searches without dropping the total; pass the returned nextCursor as cursor to reach the rest. | |
| point | No | Coordinates as "lat,lon" (e.g., "47.6,-122.3"). Returns alerts whose geometry contains this point. Mutually exclusive with area and zone. | |
| cursor | No | Opaque continuation token from a previous response's nextCursor. Omit for the first page. The token carries its own page size, so limit applies to the first page only. Every call re-fetches the active-alert feed, so alerts are contiguous within one response but not across calls — the active set changes continuously as alerts are issued and expire, so a continued page covers the collection as it stands at that moment. | |
| region | No | Restrict to NWS marine region groups: "AL" (Alaska waters), "AT" (Atlantic Ocean), "GL" (Great Lakes), "GM" (Gulf of Mexico), "PA" (Eastern Pacific and US West Coast), "PI" (Central and Western Pacific). Marine alerts only — a land alert never matches. Mutually exclusive with area, point, zone, and region_type. | |
| status | No | Alert status filter. Default "Actual". Use a different value only when you specifically need non-live alerts. | Actual |
| urgency | No | Filter by urgency level. | |
| severity | No | Filter by severity level. | |
| certainty | No | Filter by certainty level. | |
| region_type | No | Restrict to land-based or marine alerts. Mutually exclusive with area, point, zone, and region. |
Output Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| error | No | Present when the call failed. Absent on success. | |
| shown | No | Number of alerts included in this response | |
| alerts | No | Matching alerts for this page (at most the requested limit, max 25) | |
| notice | No | Guidance when no alerts matched (echoes applied filters and suggests how to broaden), when matches remain beyond this page, or when the supplied cursor points past the end of the match set. | |
| nextCursor | No | Opaque token for the next page of matches — pass it back as `cursor`. Omitted when this is the last page. | |
| totalCount | No | Total distinct alerts matching the filters in this fetch, before the page window is applied. NWS repeats some alerts verbatim within one response; the copies are collapsed on id, so this counts each alert once. Compare against shown to tell whether matches were withheld from this page. | |
| appliedFilters | No | Summary of applied search filters |