API returns "Unknown" for any and all Canadian cities for "current_observation": "weather" field and "unknown" for the "icon" field as well. | The WeatherAPI Community Customer Community

API returns "Unknown" for any and all Canadian cities for "current_observation": "weather" field and "unknown" for the "icon" field as well.

This has been going on for at least a week. The data does exist, because you can see it when viewing these locations on the Wunder website, it's just not being returned by the API. I know this used to work fine over the last several years and just stopped recently.

I'm seeing similar questions with no response so I guess this is a "user" forum and no one from Weather Underground is actually going to read this? I sure hope I'm wrong!

James Richards

6 Posts
1 Reply Like

Posted 4 years ago

4 years ago

Brendan Hayes, Official Rep

962 Posts
124 Reply Likes

Can you share which URLs you're seeing no results? Canadian cities are still working, but there might be an issue with the city matching correctly.

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2016-10-27T04:16:05+00:00

Eric Drooff

1 Post
0 Reply Likes

I'm experiencing the same thing. I'm pulling forecast for PWS IHALTONH2 and getting null values.

4 years ago

James Richards

6 Posts
1 Reply Like

Thanks for your fast reply. I've since discovered that some locations do include this information but most pws: locations near me no longer do. In the past it seemed like most of them did. The one I was using for the last year had the info until recently and no longer does. I found another pws near me that has this info, but I'm wondering what if anything has changed. Why do most pws locations not have this info any more?

It may also be of interest to someone at Weather Underground to know that it is not possible to post to this forum using Google's browser Chrome. I've tried on multiple computers and I always have to switch to internet explorer in order to be able to log in and post.

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4 years ago

Brendan Hayes, Official Rep

962 Posts
124 Reply Likes

Thanks for the info about Chrome. I use Chrome and haven't hit that problem, but others might.

The locations related to PWS is what we are investigating. The city update shouldn't have made so issues, and we are investigating them all.

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2016-10-27T06:10:04+00:00

Talha Satti

3 Posts
0 Reply Likes

https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/unable-to-get-historical-budapest-data

2016-10-27T06:10:31+00:00

Talha Satti

3 Posts
0 Reply Likes

Please, do look into this too.

4 years ago

WeatherVor

38 Posts
4 Reply Likes

If you do it one by one, it's not going to work. I estimate that 5-10% of the sites have these issues, so the number in the thousands.

You could easy write a simple script that pulls data from all of the locations in your database to flag the ones which are returning invalid/missing data.

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4 years ago

James Richards

6 Posts
1 Reply Like

The pws that worked for me yesterday:
http://api.wunderground.com/api/MyApiKeyHere/conditions/lang:en/q/pws:IQCSAINT96.json

is now returning

"weather":"",
...
"icon":"cloudy",

So clearly there are several problems on your end.
1: many pws do not return the expected info when queried.
2: sometimes a certain pws will return the info and some days it won't.
3: sometimes the data is there for the icon, so it should also be available for the "weather" field

Here are just a few more of the many pws in my area that either return "" or "unkown" for weather and/or icon (today):

pws:IQUBECSA89
pws:IQCSAINT54
pws:IQUBECSA89

basically almost all of them in my region are failing. You can find more stations with the problem by going to https://www.wunderground.com/?MR=1 and looking at station in rural Quebec. I have not personally looked at other parts of the country so I do not know if the problem is nationwide or not.

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1 person likes this

4 years ago

Sagar Mandal

1 Post
0 Reply Likes

We are seeing this icon issues for 'Saint-Constant, Canada', 'Saint Andrew's, Canada' etc.
Getting 'unknown.gif' and '.gif' respectively.
https://api.wunderground.com/api/<API KEY>/forecast/conditions/astronomy/hourly/almanac/lang:...
https://api.wunderground.com/api/<API KEY>/forecast/conditions/astronomy/hourly/almanac/lang:...

I am also seeing the icon set on below page are not getting displayed because mixed content issue.
https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/d/docs?d=resources/icon-sets&MR=1

(Edited)

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4 years ago

James Richards

6 Posts
1 Reply Like

The Weather Underground team do not seem to be very interested in fixing this basic bug and essential feature in their API. What's the deal?

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4 years ago

Andrew Keyser

4 Posts
0 Reply Likes

Still seeing this for pws queries in Edmonton, AB, Canada. From time-to-time, I will see a valid "weather" string come in, but it is most certainly NOT reliable, it is usually blank.

This has been broken for almost a month now. Most of us here are developing software and realize what a big bug this is and are rightly concerned at how long this has been unfixed. I am worried what this means for the future of the Wunderground API; if something that is relied upon so heavily by apps and weather enthusiasts can go unfixed for so long, is there *any* dedication to your developer community? This is even broken on your *own front-end!*

Baffling.

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4 years ago

Bill Myers

8 Posts
1 Reply Like

I read this post with interest as I have the same opinion about weather underground. My own pws IBCSMITH2 which has always been equated with the nearest city of Smithers BC no longer is and I get no values for current conditions and icon for over a month. This has been going on for over a month. I have reported this several times and have never received any kind of reply, acknowledgement or indication of when this will be fixed. I also noted with the latest update to there android application that it keeps returning "Unfortunately, weather has stopped". It would appear that everything they've done as enhancements or improvements recently have just broken the existing system. As the owner of data that I contribute with my pws I would have expected better company support! My frustration is mounting.

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1 person likes this

4 years ago

Rasputin007

15 Posts
2 Reply Likes

I have the same problem, no "weather" and "icon" data in the UK.
This appears to be the case in the response files (xml and json), but also in the WeatherUnderground app, Android and iOS.
The funny thing though is that if I pick a different pws nearby (6 miles away) the app suddenly has all data. Back to my closest pws and no weather condition and icon again.
Didn't used to happen the last few years with that pws.

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