WeatherDotgov Agent

This agent provides the ability to query for current and forecast weather data from NOAA. The agent extends BaseWeatherAgent that provides caching of recently requested data, as well as mapping of weather point names from NOAA's naming scheme to the standardized CF-conventions scheme.

Configuration

The following is an example configuration for the Weather.gov agent. All configuration parameters are optional.

Parameters

1. "database_file" - sqlite database file for weather data caching. Defaults to "weather.sqlite" in the agent's data directory

2. "max_size_gb" - maximum size of cache database. When cache exceeds this size, data will get purged from cache until the cache is within the configured size.

3. "poll_locations" - list of locations to periodically poll for current data.

   1. For current weather, the only supported location format is station id. Format: [{"station": "KLAX"}, {"station": "KBOI"}]
   2. For hourly forecast supported location formats are
      1. wfo, x, y - Format: {"wfo": 'BOU', 'x': 54, 'y': 62}
      2. latitude, longitude - Format: {"lat": 39.0693, "long": -94.6716}. Weather agent will first lookup wfo,x,y for the given latitude and logitude and then get the forceast data based on wfo, x, y
      3. station id - Format: [{"station": "KLAX"}, {"station": "KBOI"}] The input list can contain valid locations with different formats. For example, [{"station": "KLAX"}, {"station": "KBOI"}, {"wfo": 'BOU', 'x': 54, 'y': 62}] is a valid input list for hourly forecast

4. "poll_interval" - polling frequency or the number of seconds between each poll.

   {
       "database_file": "weather.sqlite",
       "max_size_gb": 1,
       "poll_locations": [{"station": "KLAX"}, {"station": "KPHX"}],
       "poll_interval": 60
   }
   

Registry Configuration

The registry configuration file for this agent can be found in agent's data directory. This configuration provides the point name mapping from NOAA's point scheme to the CF-conventions scheme by default. The file leaves the unit name columns for each point blank, as this agent does not include unit conversion. Points that do not specify 'Standard_Point_Name' were found to not have a logical match to any point found in the CF-Conventions. For these points NOAA point names (Service_Point_Name) will be used.

Notes

The WeatherDotGov agent does not utilize an API key, as NOAA allows users to gather weather data for free, and does not provide nor require keys.

This implementation of the weather agent does not include historical weather data, as NOAA does not provide an accessible endpoint from which historical data may be obtained.

Data provided by NOAA is in a nested dictionary format. The base weather agent does not handle unit conversion for arbitrary nested dictionary format and hence this agent does not support unit conversion at this time.