Office does not exist

[aaronchantrill]

I'm trying to use the instructions to get weather forecast data in Python 3. I'd like the user to be able to just enter a city and state.

I am using the geopy geocoder to convert the location to latitude/longitude:

# Convert City, State, Country to latitude, longitude
# Initialize Nominatim API
try:
    geolocator = geopy.geocoders.Nominatim(user_agent="AaronTest 1.0")
    location = geolocator.geocode("Lewisburg WV United States")
    print(f"latitude: {location.latitude}")
    print(f"longitude: {location.longitude}")
except geopy.adapters.GeocoderUnavailable:
    print("Geocoder unavailable")

This responds with:

latitude: 37.8017879
longitude: -80.4456303

So far so good. Then I use the latitude/longitude to get the forecast URL:

url = f"https://api.weather.gov/points/{location.latitude},{location.longitude}"
locationresponse = requests.get(
    url,
    headers=headers,
    timeout=2
)
jsondoc = str(locationresponse.content, 'utf-8')
locationdata = json.loads(jsondoc)
locationdata

This responds with

{'@context': ['https://geojson.org/geojson-ld/geojson-context.jsonld',
  {'@version': '1.1',
   'wx': 'https://api.weather.gov/ontology#',
   's': 'https://schema.org/',
   'geo': 'http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#',
   'unit': 'http://codes.wmo.int/common/unit/',
   '@vocab': 'https://api.weather.gov/ontology#',
   'geometry': {'@id': 's:GeoCoordinates', '@type': 'geo:wktLiteral'},
   'city': 's:addressLocality',
   'state': 's:addressRegion',
   'distance': {'@id': 's:Distance', '@type': 's:QuantitativeValue'},
   'bearing': {'@type': 's:QuantitativeValue'},
   'value': {'@id': 's:value'},
   'unitCode': {'@id': 's:unitCode', '@type': '@id'},
   'forecastOffice': {'@type': '@id'},
   'forecastGridData': {'@type': '@id'},
   'publicZone': {'@type': '@id'},
   'county': {'@type': '@id'}}],
 'id': 'https://api.weather.gov/points/37.8018,-80.4456',
 'type': 'Feature',
 'geometry': {'type': 'Point', 'coordinates': [-80.4456, 37.8018]},
 'properties': {'@id': 'https://api.weather.gov/points/37.8018,-80.4456',
  '@type': 'wx:Point',
  'cwa': 'RNK',
  'forecastOffice': 'https://api.weather.gov/offices/RNK',
  'gridId': 'RNK',
  'gridX': 53,
  'gridY': 90,
  'forecast': 'https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/RNK/53,90/forecast',
  'forecastHourly': 'https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/RNK/53,90/forecast/hourly',
  'forecastGridData': 'https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/RNK/53,90',
  'observationStations': 'https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/RNK/53,90/stations',
  'relativeLocation': {'type': 'Feature',
   'geometry': {'type': 'Point', 'coordinates': [-80.432601, 37.809397]},
   'properties': {'city': 'Lewisburg',
    'state': 'WV',
    'distance': {'unitCode': 'wmoUnit:m', 'value': 1420.4991508435},
    'bearing': {'unitCode': 'wmoUnit:degree_(angle)', 'value': 233}}},
  'forecastZone': 'https://api.weather.gov/zones/forecast/WVZ507',
  'county': 'https://api.weather.gov/zones/county/WVC025',
  'fireWeatherZone': 'https://api.weather.gov/zones/fire/WVZ507',
  'timeZone': 'America/New_York',
  'radarStation': 'KFCX'}}

So it looks like I should be able to get my forecast information from https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/RNK/53,90/forecast. However, when I go to this location, I get:

{
    "correlationId": "12f791cb",
    "detail": "Office rnk does not exist",
    "instance": "https://api.weather.gov/requests/12f791cb",
    "status": 404,
    "title": "Office Does Not Exist",
    "type": "https://api.weather.gov/problems/InvalidOffice"
}

This worked a couple of weeks ago, but this week I have tried with a few different locations and keep getting errors. Has something changed, or am I misunderstanding the instructions?

Thank you!

[aeharding]

The API is currently having issues it looks like. Should be temporary.

[aaronchantrill]

Thank you for looking. That's what I figured at first, but it's been at least a few days since this worked. Of course, I understand people not being available to run out and fix things in the last week of December, but I'm curious what the uptime percentage is for this service. Is there a way I could check and see if the service is known to be down?

Thank you,
Aaron

[aeharding]

I use this API on https://ppg.report for around a year. I just saw problems loading forecasts and checked weather-api/discussions.

I don't think this service is down that often.

[akrherz]

See discussion at #608 and NCO ADM Messages

[aaronchantrill]

Thanks. I just started working with this, so it seemed likely that I had messed something up. Thanks for letting me know. As of now, this method seems to be working again.