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Statistics

Returns minimum, maximum, mean (average) and counts for a defined time period with Synoptic basic and advanced quality control applied. Statistics are available for the entire period of record for all stations.

Request Format

A Statistics request is an HTTP URL with the following form:

CODE 
https://api.synopticdata.com/v2/stations/statistics

Acquiring data from this web service requires certain parameters. When encoding URLs, all parameters are separated using the ampersand (&) character and their value is indicated by an equal sign (=). Below is a list of accepted parameters.

  • token (required), Your application’s API token. This is used to identify who is requesting API data. You are never required to use multiple tokens, but you can use as many as you need. Learn more in our tokens overview.

  • At least one station selection parameter (required):

Station Selection Parameters

These selectors individually or combined to target the desired stations.

Exclusion Operator

Selectors noted as (excludable) may be specified with a ! preceding a value to remove/exclude from the selection from a result set. So stid=!KSLC would prevent KSLC from returning in a query. This should be used in combination with different selectors. Remember to only include any given selector once.

stid

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of SynopticLabs station IDs. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: stid=mtmet,kslc,fps. Try it Now

state

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of abbreviated 2 character states. If country is not included, default is United States (US). Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: state=ut,wy,dc.

country

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of abbreviated 2 or 3 character countries. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: country=us,ca,mx.

nwszone

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of National Weather Service Zones. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: nwszone=UT003,CA041.

nwsfirezone

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of National Weather Service Fire Zones. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: nwsfirezone=LOX241

cwa

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of National Weather Service County Warning Areas. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: cwa=LOX.

gacc

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of Geographic Area Coordination Centers. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: gacc=GB.

subgacc

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of Sub Geographic Area Coordination Centers. Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: subgacc=EB07.

county

(string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of counties. Use the state parameter to filter by state in the case of duplicate county names (i.e. “King”). Use a ! before any value to exclude matching stations. Example: county=king&state=wa.

vars

(string), Single or comma separated list of sensor variables found here. The request will return all stations matching at least one of the variables provided. This is useful for filtering all stations that sense only certain variables, such as wind speed, or pressure. Do not specify vars twice in a query string. Some web services use this argument to adjust what information is delivered. Example: vars=wind_speed,pressure. Try it Now

varsoperator

(string), Define how &vars is understood. or (the default) means any station with any variable in the list is used. and means a station must report every variable to be included. Example: varsoperator=and.

network

(number, string, excludable), Single or comma separated list of network IDs or short names. The ID can be found be using the Networks service and are also listed here. Use a ! before any value to exclude specific networks from a result set. Example: network=153 or network=44,251.

radius

(string), A comma separated list of three values of the type [latitude,longitude,miles] or [stn_id,miles]. Coordinates are in decimal degrees. Returns all stations within radius of the point (or station, given by the station ID) and provides the DISTANCE of the station from given location with units of miles. Adding limit=n to the query will limit the number of returned stations to n stations, and will order the stations by DISTANCE. Some examples are: radius=41.5,-120.25,20, radius=wbb,10, radius=41.5,-120.25,20&limit=10.

bbox

(string), A bounding box defined by the lower left and upper right corners in decimal degrees latitude and longitude coordinates, in the form of [lonmin,latmin,lonmax,latmax]. Recall that for regions involving the western and southern hemispheres that the coordinates are negative values (e.g., 120 W is -120, 20 S is -20). Example: bbox=-120,40,-119,41.

Bounding Box Thinning

A new feature allows you to use the API to thin the returned station set within a bounding box by providing some additional arguments. These arguments only take effect when the bbox parameter is used:

height

(number) the height of the map viewport in pixels

width

(number) the width of the map viewport in pixels

spacing

(number) the preferred number of pixels a station on the map should consume

networkimportance

(numbers, comma-separated) a list of comma separated network IDs that will be considered in the order provided. When there is a collision of stations within the defined “spacing” area, any station matching the list of preferred networks will be shown over any other.

status

(string), A value of either active or inactive returns only stations that are currently set as active in the archive. By default, omitting this parameter will return all stations. Example: status=active.

complete

(1, 0 [default]), A value of 1 or 0. When set to 1 an extended list of metadata attributes for each returned station is provided. This result is useful for exploring the zones and regions in which a station resides. Example: complete=1.

fields

(string), Case-insensitive comma-separated list of metadata attributes to include in the output response. Default is to include all attributes. Only works with attributes defined in the default metadata set (e.g. attributes shown via complete=1 cannot be selected). Example: fields=stid,name.

sitinghistory

(0 [default], 1), Will return all historical siting metadata for each station, as a list within the SITING key (requires complete=1 to be enabled). Example: sitinghistory=1.

  • Either start and end, or recent (one is required but not both)

    • start and end , Defines time range for statistics to be returned by the request (start and end inclusive).
      If period=day must be formatted as YYYYmmdd, if period=month, must be formatted as YYYYmm.

    • recent, Indicates the integer number of days or months to return, previous to the current date. For example: recent=5&period=day will return the last 5 days of statistics (note that other data services define recent in minutes).

  • vars, The statistics service requires users to pass at least one variable. Most variables are supported.

Optional Parameters

  • period (day [default], month), The time period represented by returned statistics. For example, start=20250101&end=20250131&period=day will return daily statistics for January 2025.

  • statistic (all [default], min, max, mean, count), The type of statistic to return, all (default) returns all available statistics.

  • obtimezone (UTC [default], local), Indicates if the time zone of the response is in UTC or the local time zone of the station. Sets the time zone applied to the observation output (input times associated with start and end are always UTC). Example: obtimezone=local

  • showemptystations (0 [default], 1), Indicates if stations with no observations will be returned. Setting to 1 will return any station meeting the defined time period, variables, and geographic or network parameters, even if there are no observation data available.

  • showemptyvars (0 [default], 1), Indicates if variables with no observations for the requested time period will be returned. Default behavior is to remove any variables from the STATISTICS element if no data is present. Setting to 1 will return keys in the STATISTICS element for any requested variables. This guarantees that all keys in the SENSOR_VARIABLES element will be present in the STATISTICS element. Note that if all requested variables are empty you will also need to pass showemptystations=1 to retain the station and variables in the response.

  • units (metric [default], english, [custom format]), Defines the unit of measure for returned data. For standard measurements used by many in the United States english will fill most needs. There is also the ability to support custom unit configurations. This is achieved by accessing the variable group such as “temp” and setting the desired unit using a pipe (|) character. The following list describes the available units for each variable group.

    • temp (C, F, K), Temperature: Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin.

    • speed (mps, mph, kph, kts), Speed/Velocity: Meters per second, miles per hour, kilometers per hour, knots.

    • pres (pa, mb, inhg), Pressure: Pascals, millibars, inches mercury.

    • height (m, ft), Height: Meters, feet.

    • precip (mm, cm, in), Precipitation: Millimeters, centimeters, inches.

    • alti (pa, inhg), Altimeter: Pascals, inches mercury.

    Furthermore, it is possible to modify one of the preset settings (metric/english). This is achieved by appending a variable group and unit to the parameter string with a comma. For example, to use “english” units with any speed variables in mph (instead of default knots) the parameter would be &units=english,speed|mph.

The following example will request all daily (period=day) statistics for air temperature for KSLC (Salt Lake City Airport) for the month of January in 2025:

CODE 
https://api.synopticdata.com/v2/stations/statistics?stid=kslc&vars=air_temp&period=day&start=20250101&end=20250131&token=YOUR_TOKEN_HERE

Response Format Parameters

  • timeformat, Defines a time format that all time stamps in the data response to be formatted to. By default the API will return time values in ISO 8601 format. This behavior can be changed by passing a string with a valid strftime expression. Below are some common examples.

    • timeformat=%m/%d/%Y at %H:%M would yield “06/22/2017 at 17:06”

    • timeformat=%b%20%d%20%Y%20-%20%H:%M would yield “Jun 22 2017 - 17:06”

    • timeformat=%s returns Unix/POSIX time in terms of seconds (this parameter cannot be used with obtimezone). This is a special function in addition to the supported strftime arguments.

  • output (json [default], xml), Indicates the response format of the request. It’s recommended to use the JSON format which there are well supported parsing libraries in all major languages.

Request Response

JSON Format

The Statistics service will return its results in a single organized and self describing JSON object. At a minimum, every request will return a JSON object with a SUMMARY field.

An example JSON response would be:

JSON 
{
    STATION: [
        {
            ID: "1",
            STID: "WBB",
            NAME: "U of U William Browning Building",
            ELEVATION: "4806.0",
            LATITUDE: "40.76623",
            LONGITUDE: "-111.84755",
            STATUS: "ACTIVE",
            MNET_ID: "153",
            STATE: "UT",
            TIMEZONE: "America/Denver",
            ELEV_DEM: "4727.7",
            PERIOD_OF_RECORD: {
                start: "1997-01-01T00:00:00Z",
                end: "2025-02-19T05:55:00Z"
            },
            UNITS: {
                position: "m",
                elevation: "ft"
            },
            SENSOR_VARIABLES: {
                air_temp: {
                    air_temp_set_1: {}
                }
            },
            STATISTICS: {
                air_temp_set_1: [
                    {
                        min: -3.58,
                        max: 28.72,
                        mean: 12.87,
                        count: 44638.0,
                        min_time: "2023-10-29T13:53:00Z",
                        max_time: "2023-10-09T22:53:00Z",
                        time_period: {
                            type: "month",
                            value: "2023-10",
                            timezone: "Etc/UTC"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        min: -4.48,
                        max: 20.83,
                        mean: 6.37,
                        count: 43125.0,
                        min_time: "2023-11-27T11:35:00Z",
                        max_time: "2023-11-04T22:21:00Z",
                        time_period: {
                            type: "month",
                            value: "2023-11",
                            timezone: "Etc/UTC"
                        }
                    }
                ]
            },
            RESTRICTED: false,
            RESTRICTED_METADATA: false
        }
    ],
    SUMMARY: {
        NUMBER_OF_OBJECTS: 1,
        RESPONSE_CODE: 1,
        RESPONSE_MESSAGE: "OK",
        METADATA_PARSE_TIME: "0.2 ms",
        METADATA_DB_QUERY_TIME: "5.1 ms",
        DATA_QUERY_TIME: "9.4 ms",
        DATA_PARSING_TIME: "0 ms",
        TOTAL_DATA_TIME: "10 ms",
        VERSION: "v2.25.2"
    },
    UNITS: {
        air_temp: "Celsius"
    }
}

  • SUMMARY{}

    • NUMBER_OF_OBJECTS, is a integer value of the number of stations returned.

    • RESPONSE_CODE, is a numerical code indicating the status of the request.

      • “1” = “OK”

      • “2” = “Zero Results”

      • “200” = “Authentication failure”

      • “400” = “Violates a rule of the API”

    • RESPONSE_MESSAGE, is a string explaining the RESPONSE_CODE.

    • VERSION, is the API’s current version number.

    • METADATA_PARSE_TIME, is the amount of time it took for the API to parse the metadata.

    • METADATA_QUERY_TIME, is the amount of time it took for the API to query the metadata.

    • DATA_QUERY_TIME, is the amount of time it took for the API to query the data from the database.

    • DATA_PARSING_TIME, is the amount of time it took for the API to format the queried data into output.

    • TOTAL_DATA_TIME, is the amount of time if took for the API to query and parse the data.

  • STATION[]

    • SENSOR_VARIABLES[], summary of variables in the STATISTICS element.

    • STATISTICS[], contains all the station’s statistics over the specified period.

  • UNITS{}

    • A list of the units of each variable in the STATISTICS element.

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