Where it all comes from
Every number on paweather.com comes from a public, free, no-key API. This page lists each provider, what we use them for, and how often we refresh.
Primary model · every 10 min
Open-source weather API aggregating ECMWF, GFS, ICON, JMA, and others. We use it for current conditions, hourly and daily forecasts, extended outlooks, UV, marine waves, air quality, and pollen.
open-meteo.com →Alerts · every 90 sec
All watches, warnings, and advisories are pulled from the NWS alerts API for area PA. This is the authoritative source — we don't filter or edit.
api.weather.gov →Radar frames · every 10 min
Animated precipitation radar tiles with 2-hour past + 30-minute nowcast. CORS-enabled tile manifest with no API key required.
api.rainviewer.com →Tropical · every 3 hours
Active Atlantic tropical systems via the CurrentStorms.json feed straight from Miami. Track, intensity, and movement come from official advisories.
nhc.noaa.gov →River gauges · every 15 min
Real-time stream gauges for Susquehanna, Delaware, Allegheny, Mon, Ohio, Schuylkill, Lehigh, Yough and more. We display stage height and discharge.
waterservices.usgs.gov →Buoys · every hour
National Data Buoy Center provides Lake Erie station observations — water temp, wave height, air temp, pressure — from buoy 45142.
ndbc.noaa.gov →Satellite · every 10 min
Pre-rendered visible, infrared, and water-vapor imagery for the East US sector.
star.nesdis.noaa.gov →Geocoding · on demand
Free, CORS-enabled ZIP code → lat/lon lookups used on the ZIP forecast page.
zippopotam.us →Base map · every page load
Every map on the site uses OpenStreetMap tiles (desaturated with a CSS filter) and the Leaflet JS library, loaded from unpkg.
openstreetmap.org →If a source becomes unreachable, the affected module shows a polite "feed unavailable" notice and continues to retry. No forecast is falsified or cached stale; we'd rather show an honest "—" than a stale number.
paweather.com uses only APIs that are free and require no authentication. That's a deliberate design choice: it keeps the site zero-infrastructure, dependency-light, and transparent about what any reader can verify themselves.