Description: <p><strong>Weather_Stations</strong> is a hosted point feature layer that provides near real-time weather observations from National Weather Service (NWS) and NOAA weather stations located throughout Pennsylvania and surrounding states within a configurable buffer area. The layer is designed to support emergency management, situational awareness, and operational decision-making by providing current meteorological conditions from fixed observation stations.</p><p>Each feature represents a single weather station and contains the latest available observation, including temperature, dew point, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, wind gusts, barometric pressure, visibility, precipitation, cloud information, weather conditions, and other meteorological parameters. The layer also stores station metadata such as station identifier, station name, elevation, location, and operational status.</p><p>The layer is intended to serve as the authoritative real-time weather observation layer for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) GIS environment and integrates with other operational datasets, including power outages, National Weather Service warnings, transportation incidents, and critical infrastructure.</p><p>Weather observations are automatically refreshed at regular intervals (typically every five minutes) while station locations remain fixed. New stations can be automatically discovered and added through a scheduled synchronization process.</p><h3>Primary Data Source</h3><ul><li>National Weather Service (NWS) API</li><li>NOAA Weather Observation Stations</li><li>Latest Observation Endpoint: <code>https://api.weather.gov/stations/{stationId}/observations/latest</code></li></ul><h3>Intended Uses</h3><ul><li>Emergency Operations Centers (EOC)</li><li>Incident Management</li><li>Situational Awareness</li><li>Severe Weather Monitoring</li><li>Infrastructure Impact Assessment</li><li>Power Outage Analysis</li><li>Transportation Operations</li><li>GIS Dashboards and Web Applications</li></ul><h3>Update Frequency</h3><p>Current weather observations are updated approximately every <strong>5 minutes</strong>. Station metadata is synchronized periodically to incorporate newly established stations and retire inactive stations.</p><h3>Spatial Coverage</h3><p>Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a configurable buffer extending into neighboring states to provide advance weather awareness for approaching weather systems.</p><h3>Coordinate System</h3><p>WGS 1984 (EPSG:4326)</p><h3>Geometry Type</h3><p>Point Features (Weather Observation Stations)</p><h3>Maintained By</h3><p>Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA)</p><h3>Version</h3><p>Version 1.0 – Weather Observation System</p>
Copyright Text: Data Source: National Weather Service (NWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather API.