These API Terms of Use ("API Terms") are the supplemental terms referenced in Section 20 of the WxAlerts Terms of Service (the "Terms"). They govern access to the WxAlerts developer APIs, API keys, and authenticated MQTT feeds, and are accepted at key issuance. Capitalised terms not defined here have the meaning given in the Terms.
1. Scope; Relationship to the Terms
These API Terms apply to programmatic access to the Service, whether or not that access uses a key. The Terms apply in full alongside them. Where these API Terms are silent, the Terms control; where a provision here is more specific, it governs the API access it describes. Nothing in these API Terms expands any licence granted by the Terms.
The Life-Safety Disclaimer in Section 6 of the Terms applies to every byte the API returns and to everything you build on it. It is the single most important provision on this page.
2. API Keys
2.1 Issuance
Keys are issued at our discretion, to a named individual or organisation, for a described purpose. We may decline a request, and may require you to describe your intended use, expected request volume, and how you will attribute the data.
2.2 Security
A key identifies you and is your responsibility. You must: keep it secret; not commit it to a public repository, client-side bundle, mobile application binary, or anywhere else a third party can extract it; not share, sell, sublicense, or transfer it; use a separate key per application or environment where practical; and notify us at [email protected] promptly on discovering that a key has been exposed.
You are responsible for all activity under your key, including activity by someone who obtained it through your failure to secure it. We may rotate or revoke an exposed key without notice; that is a containment measure, not a penalty.
2.3 Accurate Registration
Registration details must be accurate and kept current. Identify your client with a descriptive User-Agent including a contact address. An unidentifiable client that starts behaving oddly gets blocked rather than emailed.
3. Rate Limits and Fair Use
Published limits, current figures, and enforcement behaviour are at wxalerts.org/limits, which forms part of these API Terms. Keyed access is subject to the limits communicated at issuance; where none were stated, the published unauthenticated limits apply.
You must honour 429 Too Many Requests responses and any Retry-After header, back off on errors rather than retrying in a tight loop, and cache responses for at least as long as the underlying data takes to change. You may not distribute requests across multiple addresses, keys, or accounts in order to exceed a limit that applies to you.
Limits may change. Material reductions to a keyed limit will be notified to the key holder in advance where we have contact details, except where an immediate reduction is necessary to protect the Service.
4. Permitted Use
Subject to the Terms and these API Terms, you may use the API to build applications, visualisations, integrations, research tools, displays, and notification systems for personal, educational, research, or non-commercial community use. This mirrors the licence in Section 4.1 of the Terms and does not widen it.
Commercial use, including reselling access, redistributing for gain, or building a commercial service on the API, requires our prior written permission under Section 3 of the Terms. Ask before you build, not after. We are a not-for-profit and are generally willing to talk; what we cannot do is discover it after the fact.
You may not use the API to: circumvent a limit, block, or revocation; bulk-mirror the API in order to offer a substitute for it; train a model on Service output for redistribution as a competing product without permission; or scrape any part of the Service that is not exposed as an API endpoint.
5. Redistribution
Permitted. You may redistribute API output to your own users within the application you built, display it publicly, quote it, and pass it to your own subscribers, provided the attribution in Section 7 travels with it and the use is otherwise permitted under Section 4.
Prohibited. You may not: offer the raw API as a service of your own, whether proxied, mirrored, or rebranded; redistribute it in a way that removes, obscures, or replaces attribution; present it as a feed originating from you, from NOAA, or from the NWS; or redistribute any third-party or restricted dataset except as that provider permits. Where a dataset carries pass-through restrictions, those restrictions are stated at the endpoint that serves it and bind you as they bind us.
Derived products, including machine-learning nowcasts, processed GLM lightning, radar mosaics, threat objects, and other experimental outputs, are WxAlerts products under Section 4.3 of the Terms. They are not official NWS products and must never be redistributed as though they were.
6. Downstream Compliance
The restrictions below follow the data. If you redistribute API output, you must ensure your own users are bound by terms at least as protective, and you remain responsible for downstream compliance with them.
6.1 Emergency Alert Tones and Codes
Section 3.1 of the Terms applies to API output in full. Neither you nor your users may use API output to reproduce, transmit, broadcast, or simulate the Wireless Emergency Alert common audio attention signal, the Emergency Alert System Attention Signal, or EAS header codes, including any recording or any sound substantially similar to them, except as permitted by 47 C.F.R. §§ 10.520(d) and 11.45. This covers notification sounds, alert tones in applications and streams, and audio generated from alert text. Violations may result in immediate revocation and referral to the Federal Communications Commission.
6.2 Government Weather Data
Section 4.3 of the Terms applies to API output in full. Neither you nor your users may claim NWS or NOAA information as your own, use it in a manner implying endorsement by or affiliation with NOAA or the NWS, or modify it and present the result as official government material. WxAlerts is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official product of NOAA or the National Weather Service, and nothing you build on the API may suggest otherwise about you either.
7. Attribution
Attribution must be visible to the people using what you built: in the interface, the page, the stream description, or the notification, not solely in a repository README.
- Unaltered NWS or NOAA data must be credited to the National Weather Service or NOAA as its source.
- WxAlerts-derived products must be credited to WxAlerts and identified as unofficial. "Nowcast by WxAlerts, not an official NWS product" is sufficient.
- Where both appear together, credit both: the NWS for the warning, WxAlerts for the processing.
- The basemap, where you use tiles served by us, carries its own requirement: "© OpenStreetMap contributors, © Protomaps". This is an ODbL obligation and is not ours to waive.
- Do not imply endorsement. Attribution identifies a source; it is not a badge, a partnership, or a certification, and may not be presented as one.
You may use the WxAlerts name and word mark for the factual purpose of identifying the source of data. Any other use of our name, logo, or trade dress requires written permission.
8. Availability; Changes; Deprecation
The API is provided "as is" and "as available" under Section 7 of the Terms. There is no service-level commitment and no uptime guarantee; see also Section 15. Endpoints, response shapes, and field semantics may change.
For breaking changes to a documented endpoint we will endeavour to give reasonable advance notice through the developer documentation and to key holders where we have contact details. We cannot promise notice where a change is forced on us by an upstream provider, or where it is necessary for security or life-safety accuracy. Build defensively: treat unknown fields as ignorable, and do not depend on undocumented behaviour.
9. Suspension and Revocation
We may suspend or revoke a key, block access, or reduce a limit, with or without notice, where we reasonably believe there has been a breach of these API Terms or the Terms, where access threatens the stability, security, or integrity of the Service, where a key has been exposed, where required by law or an upstream provider, or where a client cannot be identified and is behaving abnormally.
Where we suspend without notice, we will tell you the reason on request and, where the cause is fixable, what fixing it looks like. Suspension for stability is not a judgement about you. You may stop using the API at any time; ask us at [email protected] to retire a key you no longer need.
On revocation you must stop making requests and, on request, delete cached Service data other than what you must retain by law. Sections 5, 6 and 7 survive, as do the surviving provisions of the Terms listed in Section 18.
10. Contact
WX Alerts, Inc.
6433 Cedar Street
Milton Florida, 32570
Key requests and general developer enquiries: [email protected]
Exposed keys and security reports: [email protected]
Legal notices: [email protected]