Atlantic Hurricane Tracking

SOAP Access to the Hurricane Information

Due to many requests, we are providing an alternative access to the hurricane site data. Currently, those who have experience using the web services technology SOAP can access several data sets about the current, active hurricanes or tropical storms.

For those interested, the web services description files (WSDL) are available from here. This file enumerates the three SOAP methods available to access the current hurricane information. The web service has been tested with MS-SOAP, Apache SOAP, and Perl's SOAP::Lite. The use of these web services is left to the user.

Here is a summary of the three methods available:

getCurrentStorms() This method provides the equivalent of the web sites front page listing of current,active storms. The method returns name, position, date, wind speed, and pressure of the current storms. There can be zero or more results from this method. This method returns an array of StormResult objects.

getStormPosition() This method will return all of the position data for a given storm. The method requires the storm code to execute. The storm code is returned as a part of the getCurrentStorms() result sets. This method returns an array of StormDataResult objects.

getStormForecastPosition() Returns the current forecast track for a storm. As above, this method requires the storm code that is returned as a part of getCurrentStorms() method call. This method returns an array of StormDataResult objects. The wind and pressure fields of the StormDataResult will always be zero in the results.

It is our hope that this will provide yet another method to provide time critical information about hurricanes and tropical storms that may effect the United States mainland. If you have problems with the service or have requests for additional services, please use the "Comment or Request" link from the front page of the Hurricane web site under the "Web Services Access" selection.

Good luck, and have fun ....