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High Surf Sample

This page provides a complete sample response for a high surf hazard from the Active Hazards API endpoint. High surf hazards cover dangerous coastal wave conditions and are primarily sourced from the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS). This sample uses the NWS alert format, which has a somewhat different property structure than the standard CAP format used by Environment Canada or BoM, with NWS-specific fields for alert identification and zone classification.

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High Surf-Specific Properties

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Incident Data

The incident.properties object for an NWS high surf hazard contains alert metadata with NWS-specific field names alongside standard CAP fields. Key incident properties include:

  • messagePhenomena - NWS phenomena code (e.g., "SU" for surf)

  • messageSignificance - NWS significance code (e.g., "Y" for advisory)

  • officeId - NWS issuing office identifier (e.g., "KSGX" for San Diego)

  • eventId - NWS event tracking identifier (e.g., "KSGX-SU-Y-0003")

  • event - Event type name (e.g., "High Surf")

  • locationName - Affected areas (e.g., "San Diego County Coastal Areas; Orange County Coastal; Ventura County Beaches")

  • areaDescription - Detailed area description matching locationName

  • geocode - NWS zone codes in SAME and UGC formats (e.g., {SAME=[006073, ...], UGC=[CAZ043, ...]})

  • senderName - Issuing NWS offices (e.g., "NWS San Diego CA and NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA")

  • headline - Summarized alert headline

  • description - Detailed alert description summarized from multiple NWS alerts

  • severity - NWS severity level (e.g., "ADVISORY")

  • urgency - CAP urgency level (e.g., "Expected")

  • certainty - CAP certainty level (e.g., "Likely")

  • effectiveAt / endedAt / onsetAt / sentAt - NWS-specific timestamp fields (ISO 8601)

  • instruction - Recommended actions (e.g., stay out of water, heed lifeguard advice)

  • response - Recommended response type (e.g., "Avoid")

  • affectedZoneIds - List of affected NWS zones

  • messageAction - Alert action type (e.g., "EVENT_TIME_EXTENDED")

  • isExpired - Whether the alert has expired

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Features

The features property is null for this NWS high surf sample. Unlike CAP-based weather alerts from Environment Canada or BoM that include CAP_INFO features, the NWS alert format embeds the area and zone information directly in the incident properties rather than as separate GeoJSON features.

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Exposure Areas

High surf hazards use a single exposure level representing the source-provided alert area:

  • Level 1: Source-provided alert area - the coastal zones covered by the high surf advisory

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Sample Response

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Note: Coordinate arrays have been replaced with [...] for brevity. In actual API responses, these contain complete GeoJSON coordinate arrays. The incident.properties object has been truncated with "..." to show only key fields. The full response includes additional fields such as references, expiredReferenceIds, hazardDescription, and messageProduct. Note the NWS-specific property names (messagePhenomena, messageSignificance, officeId, eventId, effectiveAt, onsetAt, sentAt, endedAt) which differ from the standard CAP field names (effective, onset, sent, expires) used by Environment Canada and BoM alerts. Also note that features is null for this NWS alert format, unlike CAP-based alerts which include CAP_INFO features. The exposureAssessment in this sample uses legacy units (MRE, gal, 25 gal, sq feet) rather than the standard units (CAL, liter, 100 liter, sq meters) — this is a known inconsistency in the API being addressed.

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