New Weather Conditions Summary Endpoint

We’ve recently released our new weather conditions endpoint, which includes significant improvements since we first released it in beta. And to complement the conditions endpoint, we are announcing our new conditions/summary endpoint!

What are condition summaries?

The core conditions endpoint provides global, gap-free weather conditions for a specific point in time or on hourly intervals. However, you may prefer a summary of weather conditions over time, such as a day’s minimum and maximum values. This use-case is perfect for the conditions summary dataset.

The conditions/summary endpoint can provide daily summaries or summaries over custom time ranges, such as over a six-hour time range. A single summary request can create a summary for up to 24 hours of weather conditions.

These summaries include minimum, maximum, and average information for all data attributes of the core conditions endpoint, such as temperature, humidity, and dew point. Additionally, the summaries include the hour that the maximum and minimum values occurred during the summary period — an often requested feature by our users:

For items such as precip and snow, the summary will also return the estimated total received during the summary period:

Finally, for winds, the summary will include the minimum and maximum wind speeds, the hour they occurred, and the wind direction at the time of the maximum and minimum wind speeds:

Requesting Daily Summaries

Daily summaries are the default response from the conditions/summary endpoint. To obtain today’s summary for a location, perform the request without the for or from/to parameters. Alternatively, you can use for=now or for=today:

To obtain the daily summary for yesterday, include for=yesterday:

Or for a summary on a specific date in the past:

Requesting Summaries for Custom Time Ranges

To obtain a weather summary for a period other than a full day, you can provide a time range using the from/to parameters. Like the forecast endpoint, you will need to provide a filter parameter defining the number of hours you want to be included within each summary period.

For example, to obtain a summary for the past 6 hours:

To obtain an eight-hour summary starting at noon yesterday:

You can also obtain multiple summary periods in a single request for up to 24 hours maximum. For example, to obtain three eight-hour summaries for yesterday:

Unlike most other endpoints, the limit parameter is optional for the summary endpoint since the endpoint will attempt to calculate the limit parameter for you.

For example, requesting four-hour summaries for May 9, 2019:

Note that the Historical Add-on may be required to obtain historical weather conditions and summaries.

Condition Summaries vs. Observation Summaries

Previously, the only method to obtain a daily weather summary has been via our observations/summary endpoint. This endpoint provides access to daily summaries based on actual weather observations from stations across the globe. Thus, these observation summaries are very accurate when at or near the observation station.

Challenges arise when there may not be a nearby observation station to create a summary from or too few stations in a region. The conditions/summary endpoint solves this problem since it utilizes the conditions endpoint to provide gap-free global hourly weather summaries.

Like the conditions endpoint, condition summaries are currently available gap-free globally for the past 30 days. Beyond the past 30 days, condition summary coverage depends on data availability, though it has significantly more coverage than observations/summaries endpoint. Additionally, our teams are expanding our gap-free global archive to cover at least the past ten years!

Custom Summary Periods

Another major difference between condition summaries and observation summaries is the option of summaries for custom periods. While observation summaries are precalculated and only provide daily summaries, condition summaries are generated upon request and can cover custom periods, such as every six hours. This feature can be a powerful tool when analyzing trends across different periods of the day.

What about the Precip/Summary Endpoint

The precip/summary endpoint provides daily summaries of the estimated total precipitation received within the Continental US (CONUS). We are excited to announce that the datasets used by this endpoint have been improved, expanded in coverage, and included within the conditions and conditions/summary endpoints.

Currently, many users query both the observations/summary and precip/summary endpoints to better understand estimated total precipitation. Now, you only need a single query to the conditions/summary endpoint instead!

The precip/summary will be deprecated and documentation removed since it now duplicates the conditions/summary endpoint precipitation data. Clients can continue to use the endpoint as part of our 1.x version of our weather API. However, it will receive no further updates and may become unavailable in a future major API update.

We recommend that existing precip/summary endpoint users migrate to the conditions/summary endpoint.

Check out the Conditions/Summary Endpoint Today!

The conditions/summary endpoint provides gap-free global weather summaries and is available immediately for AerisWeather API Premium users and as part of the free developer trial.

Check out the new weather conditions API and tell us how you’re using it!

Share this post: