National Weather Service Coded Surface Bulletins, 2003- (JSON format)

This dataset contains the Coded Surface Bulletin dataset reformatted as JSON files. The Coded Surface Bulletin dataset is a collection of ASCII files containing the locations of weather fronts, troughs, high pressure centers, and low pressure centers as determined by National Weather Service meteorologists at the Weather Prediction Center (WPC) during the surface analysis they do every three hours. Each bulletin is broadcast on the NOAAPort service, and has been available since 2003.

Each JSON file contains one top-level object corresponding to one bulletin. The top-level object is composed of name/value pairs with the names bulletinType, createDate, validDate, Highs, Lows, ColdFronts, WarmFronts, OccludedFronts, StationaryFronts, and Troughs. The name/value pairs for bulletinType, createDate, and validDate are always present. The other name/value pairs are only present if there is corresponding data. The value for bulletinType is either "LR" or "HR", for low-resolution or high-resolution, respectively. The values for createDate and validDate are UTC timestamp strings. If the bulletinType value is "LR", the longitudes and latitudes have 1° precision. If the bulletinType value is "HR", the longitudes and latitudes have 0.1° precision.

The value associated with the name High in the top-level object is itself an object composed of three name value pairs that describe the geographic locations and surface air pressure levels for one or more high pressure centers. The names of the object elements are lats, lons, and pressures. The values for these are all arrays. For a given object, the arrays will all have the same size. The arrays contain latitudes in degrees, longitudes in degrees, and pressures in millibars. If the arrays contain N elements apiece, the object is describing N pressure centers. The object associated with the name Low in the top-level object is structured in the same way. It describes the geographic locations and surface air pressure levels for one or more low pressure centers.

The ColdFronts, WarmFronts, StationaryFronts, OccludedFronts, and Troughs names in the top-level object, when present, have values that are arrays. In each case, the array is composed of one or more objects. Each object represents a front or trough of the given type. Each object is composed of three name/value pairs with the names lats, lons, and strength. The value for the name strength is a string that is one of "weak", "moderate", "strong", or "unstated". The values associated with the names lats and lons are arrays. This pair of arrays represent the vertices of a polyline describing the location of a frontal boundary or trough.

The primary source for this dataset is an internal archive maintained by personnel at the WPC and provided to the author. It is also provided at DOI 10.5281/zenodo.2642801. Some bulletins missing from the WPC archive were filled in with data acquired from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet.