NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper

NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper

Scrape active weather alerts from the National Weather Service, filtered by state, severity, urgency, or event type. Each alert comes with its full text, affected area, and issuance details. No API key or login. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The National Weather Service publishes active alerts for every US state and marine zone, but their API returns raw CAP XML that is hard to parse and filter. This Actor reads the public alert feed directly, applies your filters as it goes, and returns each alert as one clean row. You get the same data without writing a single line of code.

Who uses it	What they scrape National Weather Service for
Emergency managers	Monitor active warnings for their county or region
Newsrooms and weather bloggers	Pull the latest severe weather alerts for their coverage area
Insurance and risk analysts	Track storm warnings to assess exposure in real time
Outdoor event planners	Check for weather watches and warnings before an event
Researchers and students	Collect historical alert data for climatology or social science studies

What it does

This Actor collects active NWS alerts by area, severity, urgency, or event type, and returns each alert as a flat row.

• 📍 Area filter: restrict alerts to a US state code like CA or TX, or a marine area code.
• ⚠️ Severity filter: choose from Extreme, Severe, Moderate, Minor, or Unknown.
• ⏱️ Urgency filter: choose from Immediate, Expected, Future, Past, or Unknown.
• 🌪️ Event type filter: narrow to a specific event like Tornado Warning or Flood Watch.
• 🔢 Max alerts: cap the number of alerts collected per run, from 1 to 1,000,000.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with National Weather Service data

🚨 Monitor severe weather for your county.

An emergency manager runs the Actor every 10 minutes with area set to their state and severity set to Severe or Extreme, then pushes new alerts to a Slack channel for immediate response.

📰 Feed a local news weather page.

A newsroom developer schedules the Actor hourly with area set to their coverage state, then renders the returned alerts on the station's website.

📊 Track alert frequency for research.

A climatology student runs the Actor daily with no filters and stores the results in a database to analyze how often tornado warnings occur in different regions.

🏕️ Check conditions before an outdoor event.

An event planner runs the Actor the morning of a festival with area set to the venue's state and event type set to Flood Watch, then decides whether to postpone.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	The public NWS alert feed requires no registration or authentication.
Clean flat rows	Every alert is returned as one row with consistent fields, ready for spreadsheets or databases.
Real-time data	Each run pulls the current active alerts, so you always get the latest warnings.
Flexible filters	Combine area, severity, urgency, and event type to get exactly the alerts you need.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets National Weather Service the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When National Weather Service changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor with an area, severity, urgency, or event type, alone or together, and filters run as each alert is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.0085 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$0.85
1,000 results	$8.50
10,000 results	$85.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the NWS Active Weather Alerts Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to National Weather Service through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/nws-active-alerts-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check your filters. If you set area to a state code that has no active alerts, or severity to Extreme when there are none, the run will return zero items. Try clearing all filters and running again to see all active alerts.

Why did I get fewer alerts than maxItems?

The Actor returns only the alerts that match your filters and are currently active. If there are fewer active alerts than your maxItems value, you will get all of them.

Why is the area filter not working for my state?

Use the two-letter US state code in uppercase, like CA for California or TX for Texas. For marine areas, use the marine area code as published by the NWS.

Can I get alerts for US territories like Puerto Rico?

Yes. The NWS issues alerts for US territories. Use the territory's two-letter code, like PR for Puerto Rico or VI for the US Virgin Islands.

Why does the event type filter return no results for 'Tornado Warning'?

Event type is case-sensitive and must match the NWS event name exactly. Try 'Tornado Warning' with capital letters, or leave the field blank to see all event types.

FAQ

Question	Answer
What is the National Weather Service?	The National Weather Service (NWS) is a US government agency that issues weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and advisories for the United States and its territories.
What is an active alert?	An active alert is a weather watch, warning, or advisory that is currently in effect. The NWS publishes these alerts in a standard format called CAP (Common Alerting Protocol).
Do I need an API key to use this Actor?	No. This Actor reads the public NWS alert feed, which does not require any authentication or API key.
What filters can I apply?	You can filter by area (US state code or marine area code), severity (Extreme, Severe, Moderate, Minor, Unknown), urgency (Immediate, Expected, Future, Past, Unknown), and event type (e.g. Tornado Warning, Flood Watch).
Can I get alerts for multiple states at once?	The area filter accepts one state code per run. To get multiple states, run the Actor multiple times with different area values, or leave the area blank to get all alerts.
What is the maximum number of alerts I can collect?	You can set maxItems up to 1,000,000 alerts per run. The default is 10.
How often should I run this Actor?	Alerts change frequently. For real-time monitoring, schedule the Actor to run every 5 to 15 minutes. For less time-sensitive use cases, hourly or daily runs are fine.
What format is the output data in?	The Actor returns each alert as a flat row with fields like headline, description, area, severity, urgency, and event type. You can export the dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
Does this Actor include expired alerts?	No. It only collects alerts that are currently active at the time of the run. Expired alerts are not included.
Can I filter by a specific city or county?	The area filter accepts US state codes and marine area codes. For finer granularity, you can filter by event type or severity, or post-process the results by the affected zones field.

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Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by National Weather Service. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.