| Hey HN, I shared GribStream here a while ago when it was just a NOAA forecast API.
It’s grown into something bigger: a full weather data archive you can query just like a database, by time (with as-of/time-travel!), location, or more interestingly by specific weather conditions. Use built-in expressions directly in your API requests to calculate derived metrics like wind chill, dew point, or more complex like crop-specific photothermal units capture (see demos below).
Computation is fully server-side, ideal for web apps, dashboards, or mobile apps with limited resources. Demos ( https://gribstream.com/demo ):
NBM Snow Accumulation: Real-time ski conditions across North America
HRRR Corn Growth Simulator: Predict crop development stages precisely
GFS Storm Chaser: Track storms globally using dynamic filtering
NBM Wind Field Explorer: Explore wind patterns interactively Other Improvements:
Added models: NBM, GFS, HRRR, RAP, GEFS, CFS, and Google's GraphCast GFS
Bounding box queries at custom resolution. Perfect for interactive maps
Significant price reduction: over 50% cheaper, plus 90% discount for cached requests
Efficient bulk queries (up to 500 points per request) at same quota cost
Comprehensive Quickstart guide and OpenAPI spec for easier onboarding Sneak peek at what I'm currently doing:
Realtime streaming of grib files as video. This is raw, not productionized at all, just an alpha-toy but it is cool so I'd like to share a few examples.
This does no caching at all, it is generated on the fly. So you can play with the times, try other weather variables, tweak the scaling
and framerate. I'll be monitoring networking in case I need to shut it down in a hurry, please be patient. Demo for Hurricane Milton Wind speed at 80m
https://gribstream.com/video?fromTime=2024-10-08T00:00:00Z&UntilTime=2024-10-12T00:00:00Z&name=WIND&level=80%20m%20above%20ground&info=&scaleMin=0&scaleMax=40&fps=6
Convective available potential energy at the surface
https://gribstream.com/video?fromTime=2024-10-08T00:00:00Z&UntilTime=2024-10-12T00:00:00Z&name=CAPE&level=surface&info=&scaleMin=0&scaleMax=3000&fps=6
# wave height milton
https://gribstream.com/video?fromTime=2024-10-08T00:00:00Z&UntilTime=2024-10-12T00:00:00Z&name=HTSGW&level=surface&info=&scaleMin=0&scaleMax=7&fps=6
Coming Soon:
Aggregations over time/space
Lookups by city, zipcode, airport, or custom shapes
New response formats (Parquet, PNG, MP4)
Threshold-based notifications (webhooks/emails)
Full GEFS/CFS ensemble data for probabilistic forecastsSide-project hunting? If you're looking for your next indie-hack, here are a few ideas that GribStream makes ridiculously easy:
Agriculture: Crop growth modeling and irrigation planning
Renewable Energy: Forecasting for solar and wind energy production
Logistics: Weather-informed routing and delivery scheduling
Insurance: Risk modeling based on historical weather patterns
Event Planning: Scheduling and resource allocation for outdoor events Hopefully DOGE will let NOAA keep running smoothly so I can ship faster! Would appreciate your feedback, feature requests, or any ideas on what you'd love to see next. Thank you! |
The embedded expressions and derived metrics are really powerful—especially for domains like agriculture or renewable energy. The real-time GRIB video streaming demo is wild too. Are you thinking of exposing that as an API in the future?
Also, are you planning any kind of data quality control or validation layer on top of the raw model outputs, or is the assumption that users are familiar with the limitations of each model?
Amazing work—I'll definitely be following along with future updates!