Use this to keep a display of GET /weather current
without asking for more than it can show or more often than the data changes.
The rate limits apply either way.
Ask only for what you show
Set hours and days to what the screen draws:
GET /weather?lat=33.2&lon=-97.1&hours=12&days=5| default | range | |
|---|---|---|
hours |
24 | 1 to 168 |
days |
7 | 1 to 8 |
A panel showing the next twelve hours should ask for twelve. hours counts
steps, not clock hours: the series is hourly for about two days, 3-hourly to
about eight, then 6-hourly to about eleven, so hours=168 returns all of it,
around a hundred steps. These only decide how much of the forecast crosses the
wire, not how far ahead it reaches.
Poll once a minute at most
The response is cached for 60 seconds, which is the station’s cadence rather than the model’s: CWOP stations report every five minutes and METARs hourly, while NBM runs once an hour. Polling faster than a minute gains nothing; polling once a minute is the most a display can usefully do.
Pass units explicitly
A response resolved from your country comes back Cache-Control: private.
Pass units explicitly for a response a CDN can cache. See
Units.