NWS Point Forecast not working correctly

Good day…
A few days ago the primary local forecast stopped working correctly for the area our site is located in. The odd part is the other NWS reporting office for the nothern part of the state serves up the correct forecast. I have sent a request to the local webmaster for our forecast office and have had no response. I was wondering if any one else has seen this behavior and is there a fix?
I am really thinking about pulling down my site due to the bad data that is constantly being put up.
We are running build 10.37S-(b62)

Thanks!!

It appears to be an issue with the NWS and api.weather.gov not having a current point forecast for your specific gridpoint.

The detailed point forecast weather data is not currently available. The zone forecast data for MEZ020 (Androscoggin) will be displayed until the point forecast data is again available. If this persists, contact the NWS Gray - Portland, ME WFO at 207-688-3216 or email at [email protected] to have them update the point forecast for /gridpoints/GYX/70,85 on api.weather.gov

This happens at various times for various regions. It’s likely that this issue may be delaying their cutover to the new API-driven forecast.weather.gov site. I’ve found that calling the phone number is likely to get a response more than the email address. All the pertinent info about the gridpoint in error is in the message above.

Meanwhile, you can ‘downgrade’ your advforecast2.php script to V4.05 and use the older page-scraper script which is more reliable (at this time). Note that you’ll only have a single row of icons as the current forecast.weather.gov doesn’t have as many days in the forecast as the API/forecast-v3.weather.gov shows.

Hi Ken
Thank you for the help :slight_smile:
I had copied the same information you posted, about the point forecast error, and sent it to the NWS office. I will try to call them on Monday and see where that gets me.
Meanwhile using your suggestion, I downgraded to 4.05 and that has given us accurate data for the forecast. (in coming winter weather)

-Matt and Bob

I am having similar trouble with my NWS for mez014. Quit suddenly last Thurday, but came back one time (0830) on Saturday. Nothing since.
If I look at the ftp log immediately after doing a ‘test’ on the WD’s NWS forecast page I see that the ftp appeared to find mez014.txt, but the file fails during download.

Currently using WD build 85, dtd 11 Dec 2018.

I would like to try this advforecast2.php downgrade, but have no idea where to find the file, nor where to place it when I do get it. Any one fill me in here?

Fred LaPlante

Hi Fred,
The older advforecast2.php script is available on the script page with download links at the bottom of the page.

Thanks, That was quick. Fascinating stuff there.
But I misunderstood. I had thought (hoped) this was something that worked with WDisplay.
But I will keep a link to your stuff in case the need arises in the future.

The advforecast2.php script works on a weather website and accesses the NWS data directly – it doesn’t use a weather program like Weather-Display for any data.

Hi Everyone,
I have the exact same problem now with point forecast and its been going on for a few days. I’ve tried going back to 4.05 but still get no forecast. Not sure what I should be doing at this point so any suggestions would be appreciated. One thing I seem to have wrong is even the backup zone data is not being displayed so I must have something setup incorrectly for the fallback?

Thanks
John

When Viewing the source I get the info below from http://www.auburnweatherlive.com/wxforecast.php

p>Sorry.. the forecast for Auburn MA is not available at this time.</p>
<!-- advforecast2.php (JSON) - V5.09 - 26-May-2018 on PHP 5.6.40-->
<!-- RAW NWS URL: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Auburn&state=MA&site=BOX&textField1=42.2&textField2=-71.8333&e=1&TextType=2 -->
<!-- zone=MAZ012 -->
<!-- loaded URLcache from ./cache/forecast-URLcache.txt with 6 entries -->
<!-- corrected NWS API URL='https://api.weather.gov/points/42.2,-71.8333/forecast' -->
<!-- replaced point URL with gridpoint URL from URLcache -->
<!-- curl fetching 'https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/BOX/46,64/forecast' -->
<!-- HTTP stats:  RC=404 dest=23.60.72.92 port=443 (from sce=162.244.253.208)
      Times: dns=0.000 conn=0.029 pxfer=0.100 get=0.029 total=0.129 secs -->
<!-- headers returned:
HTTP/2 404 
server: nginx/1.12.2
content-type: application/problem+json
access-control-allow-origin: *
pragma: no-cache
x-server-id: vm-lnx-nids-apiapp46.ncep.noaa.gov
x-correlation-id: 3f2fb518-e45e-4a22-a163-b67583bf9c54
x-request-id: 3f2fb518-e45e-4a22-a163-b67583bf9c54
content-length: 360
cache-control: private, must-revalidate, max-age=894
expires: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 14:06:52 GMT
date: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 13:51:58 GMT
vary: Accept
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains ; preload
 -->
<!-- loaded point-forecast https://api.weather.gov/points/42.2,-71.8333/forecast - 885 bytes -->
<!-- meta info re: point='42.2,-71.8333' zone='MAZ012' metacache= './cache/forecast-MAZ012-0-json-meta.txt' -->
<!-- metaZoneURL='https://api.weather.gov/zones/forecast/MAZ012' -->
<!-- loaded meta info from ./cache/forecast-MAZ012-0-json-meta.txt -->
<!-- META
Array
(
    [city] => 4 Miles SSW Worcester
    [state] => MA
    [point] => 42.2,-71.8333
    [forecastOfficeURL] => https://api.weather.gov/offices/BOX
    [forecastZoneURL] => https://api.weather.gov/zones/forecast/MAZ012
    [forecastZone] => MAZ012
    [forecastHourlyURL] => https://api.weather.gov/points/42.2,-71.8333/forecast/hourly
    [forecastGridDataURL] => https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/BOX/46,64
    [observationStationsURL] => https://api.weather.gov/points/42.2,-71.8333/stations
    [countyZoneURL] => https://api.weather.gov/zones/county/MAC027
    [countyZone] => MAC027
    [fireWeatherZoneURL] => https://api.weather.gov/zones/fire/MAZ012
    [fireWeatherZone] => MAZ012
    [timeZone] => America/New_York
    [radarStation] => KBOX
    [zoneName] => Southern Worcester
    [WFOname] => Boston / Norton, MA
    [WFOphone] => 508.622.3250
    [WFOemail] => [email protected]
)
 -->
<p>NWS server https://api.weather.gov/points/42.2,-71.8333/forecast has an error.</p>
<p>View the source of this page for additional information in HTML comments.</p>

I lost the NWS API feed earlier this week too. So I reverted to the older zone forecasts as a test and that seems to be working fine, though the API is still down. I suspect there has been some testing going on at NWS that was interupted by the government shutdown.

Hmmm… with the V5 script, a return of

<!-- headers returned:
HTTP/2 404
server: nginx/1.12.2
content-type: application/problem+json
indicates a bad problem with the api.weather.gov service for that gridpoint.

The API docs at https://forecast-v3.weather.gov/documentation don’t really mention what the 404 return code means, but I suspect it just indicates that a current gridpoint forecast was not available (due to it not being loaded from the GFS). The same may apply to the Zone forecast if the WFO has not updated it recently.

Thanks Ken. I went back into 4.05 and changed the zone link and it