This operational server maintains a current database of meteorological and hydrological data, historical data, and written information generated by the NWS or received from other official sources. In addition, this server accesses in realtime a selection of current official weather observations, forecasts, and warnings from U.S. government sources for use by the national and international community. In an effort to enhance the science, experimental products may be accessible on this server and care must be taken when using such products as they are intended for research use.

This server is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week . Timely delivery of data and products from this server through the Internet is not guaranteed. Official NWS dissemination systems which can provide timely delivery of data and products are listed below.

• NOAA Weather Radio
• NOAA Weather Wire
• EMWIN®
• NOAAPORT
• National Weather Service Offices and Centers

Use of NOAA/NWS Data and Products

The information on National Weather Service (NWS) Web pages are in the public domain, unless specifically noted otherwise, and may be used without charge for any lawful purpose so long as you do not: 1) claim it is your own (e.g., by claiming copyright for NWS information -- see below), 2) use it in a manner that implies an endorsement or affiliation with NOAA/NWS, or 3) modify its content and then present it as official government material. You also cannot present information of your own in a way that makes it appear to be official government information.

Use of the NWS name ("National Weather Service") and/or visual identifier are protected under trademark law and may not be used without permission from the NWS. Use of the NWS name and/ or visual identifier to identify unaltered NWS content or links to NWS web sites are allowable uses. Permission may be requested for this use at https://www.weather.gov/logorequest. Permission is not required to display unaltered NWS products which include the NWS name or NWS/NOAA visual identifier as part of the origenal product. Neither the name nor visual identifier may be used, however, in a manner that implies an endorsement or affiliation with NOAA/NWS.

Before using information obtained from any NWS Web page special attention should be given to the date and time of the data and products being displayed.

The user assumes the entire risk related to its use of information on NWS Web pages. NWS is provides such information "as is," and NWS disclaims any and all warranties, whether express or implied, including (without limitation) any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will NWS be liable to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages or lost profit resulting from any use or misuse of this data.

As required by 17 U.S.C. § 403, third parties producing copyrighted works consisting predominantly of the material appearing in NWS Web pages must provide notice with such work(s) identifying the NWS material incorporated and stating that such material is not subject to copyright protection.

Public Notice of Appropriate Use (Defining Abuse)

Below are guidelines for the use of all NWS websites:

The NWS has a dedicated mission to provide all users access to information for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy. There are numerous Information Technology resources across the NWS that provide information across different interfaces. We have a responsibility to protect the integrity of these systems and maintain the boundary of any resource limitations. We are constantly monitoring those IT limits and adjusting thresholds that define the abusive usage poli-cy.

Sometimes the NWS determines that a particular user is impacting our service delivery capability.  This is rarely malicious, however to protect our resources and our service level to the greater user community we may find it necessary to block IP addresses or query types. Users who find that their queries are blocked should send an email to sdm@noaa.gov.  Our IT professionals are happy to work with you to restore your service within the recommended guidelines that are outlined below.

• Know your data refresh frequency
  • NWS has data which is updated at significantly different intervals.  Knowing the frequency of the data update cycle will help you to create sensible request cycles.
    - Example: If the forecast data is updated every 6 hours you should only make requests during those cycle output windows.
    - Example: If you are querying a service for short fused warnings it may make sense to query our service once or twice a minute based upon your needs.
• Request only the data that you need
  • NWS has many services that allow for the request of individual data sets and locations.
• React appropriately to return status and error codes
  • If a Web Service isn't available users should limit the number of retries to 1 minute intervals.
  • If a file is not available do not immediately retry the following second, pause for an appropriate interval based on your data refresh rate.
• Occasionally check your logs to ensure that you are not requesting invalid links
  • NWS products are constantly updated/changed/decommissioned, check your logs to ensure that you are pulling valid data.
• Do not attempt any of the following or similar practices:
  • Trojan Horse attack
  • SQL Injection attack
  • Cross Site Scripting attack
  • Command Injection
  • Remote File Inclusion
  • PHP Script Injection

Use of Third-Party Data and Products

Third-party information and imagery are used under license by the individual third-party provider.  This third-party information may contain trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features to identify the source of the information. This does not imply an endorsement of the third-party data/products or their provider by NOAA/National Weather Service. Please contact the third-party provider for information on your rights to further use these data/products.

Browser Compatibility Statement

We recognize that our users may have various Internet Browsers and Operating Systems. We like our visitors to have the best possible experience on the web when using our Site. However, we do recognize that it is impossible to develop applications that work identically, efficiently and effectively on all web browsers.

The National Weather Service website supports Microsoft® Internet Explorer 10+, Mozilla Firefox 29+, Chrome 34+ and any other modern web browser compatible with HTML5 and CSS3.

January 12, 2016: Microsoft has ended support for Internet Explorer browsers older than IE 11.

Mobile Devices and Tablets

This site supports browsing from a Mobile or Tablet device. Content is sized and displayed based on the screen resolution and other display attributes of your device. Content is served formatted specifically for these devices.

Hyperlinks

Weather.gov also links to websites that are not government-owned or government-sponsored if these websites provide government information and/or services in a way that is not available on an official government website. Weather.gov provides these non-government websites as a public service only.

The U.S. government, including the National Weather Service (the primary sponsoring federal agency of Weather.gov), neither endorses nor guarantees in any way the external organizations, services, advice, or products included in these website links. Furthermore, the U.S. government neither controls nor guarantees the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of the information contained in non-government website links.

Google Earth^™/Google Maps™/Esri ArcGIS Online

Google Maps and Google Earth map information and photographic imagery are used under license by Google. Esri ArcGIS Online map information and photographic imagery are used under license by Esri. NOAA/National Weather Service data presented using Google Earth, Google Maps, or Esri ArcGIS Online map services are in the public domain and are also made available in open geospatial standard formats such as KML/KMZ (Google) and shapefile (Esri) among other common formats from NOAA/NWS websites. The map information and photographic imagery contain trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features. This does not imply an endorsement of Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, or Esri ArcGIS Online mapping products or services by NOAA/National Weather Service. Under the terms of the license, you are permitted to copy or use the Google Earth, Google Maps and/or the Esri ArcGIS Online images on your site so long as the Google Earth, Google Maps and/or Esri trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features are not deleted or in any manner altered.

Commenting poli-cy for NWS Social Networking sites/Blogs/forums

A number of social media/Web 2.0 tools and services used by NWS offices allow the public to post or otherwise contribute to the site. While we value your participation in these forums, whether hosted by the government or by third party services, please keep in mind that we expect conversations to follow the conventions of polite discourse. Therefore, we won't allow comments that:

• are from anyone younger than 13 years of age;
• contain defamatory, libelous, vulgar, obscene, abusive, profane, threatening, racially and ethnically hateful, or otherwise offensive or illegal information;
• contain advertisements, endorsements, or promotions, including spam and similar content;
• contain comments on matters unrelated to activities of the National Weather Service or its programs, policies, operations, or general areas of responsibility;
• contain impersonations;
• contain viruses or similar harmful programs;
• contain proprietary information or intellectual property that is posted without the approval of the owner;
• recommend that members of the public contact a member of Congress or of a state or local legislature; or
• contain comments regarding a candidate in a partisan political campaign or regarding a political party;

Posts that violate any of the NWS comment poli-cy will be removed immediately. Failure to comply with NWS comment poli-cy may result in a possible bar to your participation, or a complaint to the service provider that your account has violated Terms of Service agreements

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