Severe Weather Sample

This page provides a complete sample response for a severe weather hazard from the Active Hazards API endpoint. Severe weather hazards encompass a broad category of weather alerts including special weather statements, severe thunderstorm warnings, and general severe weather advisories issued by national meteorological services. These alerts follow the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard.

Severe Weather-Specific Properties

Incident Data

The incident.properties object for a severe weather hazard contains standard CAP alert metadata. Key incident properties include:

• senderName - Issuing agency (e.g., "Environment Canada")

• headline - Alert headline text (e.g., "special Weather statement in effect")

• description - Detailed alert description with forecast information and expected impacts

• severity - CAP severity level (e.g., "Moderate")

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

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

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

• effective / expires / onset - ISO 8601 timing fields for the alert window

• msgType - CAP message type (e.g., "Update")

• instruction - Recommended actions (may be empty for advisory-level alerts)

• category - CAP category (e.g., "Met" for meteorological)

• hazardSeverity - Hazard severity classification (e.g., "ADVISORY")

• incidentLocationName - Human-readable location (e.g., "Banff, Alberta, Canada")

• headlineDescription - Full descriptive headline combining alert status and forecast details

Features

The features property contains a GeoJSON FeatureCollection with CAP_INFO features. Each CAP_INFO feature represents an individual alert info block from the original CAP message, containing the alert polygon geometry along with area descriptions and geocodes. Severe weather alerts from Environment Canada typically include many CAP_INFO area features covering multiple municipalities and regions. The collection may also include SMART_ALERT and EXPOSURE_AREA features.

Exposure Areas

Severe weather hazards use a single exposure level representing the source-provided alert area:

• Level 1: Source-provided alert area - the geographic region covered by the weather advisory or warning

Sample Response

{
  "name": [
    {
      "locale": "en",
      "value": "Weather - Banff, Alberta, Canada"
    }
  ],
  "description": [
    {
      "locale": "en",
      "value": "Environment Canada has issued a Weather advisory for February 15, 2026 12:02:25 UTC through February 17, 2026 13:02:43 UTC.\n\nIt is estimated that 95,900 people, 42,200 households, and $13.4 Billion (USD) of infrastructure* are within the affected area(s). Exposure estimates will be refined as additional data from official sources becomes available.\n\nspecial Weather statement in effect\nAn abrupt return to winter is on the way this week, with snow and blowing snow expected..."
    }
  ],
  "severity": "ADVISORY",
  "category": "EVENT",
  "incident": {
    "uuid": "0228ee8f-b731-4965-94ad-fdcbfb2144ae",
    "type": "SEVEREWEATHER",
    "sourceId": 1800,
    "sourceRecordId": "urn:oid:2.49.0.1.124.0508908999.2026",
    "properties": {
      "expires": "2026-02-17T13:02:43Z",
      "msgType": "Update",
      "code": "layer:SOREM:2.0",
      "hazardName": "Weather - Banff, Alberta, Canada",
      "description": "An abrupt return to winter is on the way this week, with snow and blowing snow expected. Snow will start today and continue through Tuesday. Amounts of 10 to 20 cm are expected by Wednesday, though snow totals will likely vary widely from place to place. Local amounts up to 30 cm are possible...",
      "effective": "2026-02-15T12:02:25Z",
      "senderName": "Environment Canada",
      "urgency": "Future, Past",
      "scope": "Public",
      "hazardSeverity": "ADVISORY",
      "event": "Weather",
      "headline": "special Weather statement in effect\nspecial Weather statement ended",
      "severity": "Moderate",
      "headlineDescription": "special Weather statement in effect\nAn abrupt return to winter is on the way this week, with snow and blowing snow expected...",
      "identifier": "urn:oid:2.49.0.1.124.0916280434.2026",
      "incidentLocationName": "Banff, Alberta, Canada",
      "certainty": "Possible, Observed",
      "onset": "2026-02-17T00:00:00Z",
      "sender": "[email protected]",
      "instruction": "",
      "category": "Met",
      "status": "Actual",
      "..."
    }
  },
  "uuid": "c47a6f2e-66d7-4dcb-af56-34a1a7f1abe0",
  "comment": null,
  "createdAt": 1771276565,
  "relatedHazards": [],
  "longitude": -114.68953,
  "latitude": 51.66537,
  "version": 7,
  "alertGeometry": {
    "type": "FeatureCollection",
    "features": [
      {
        "type": "Feature",
        "geometry": {
          "type": "Polygon",
          "coordinates": [...]
        },
        "properties": null
      }
    ]
  },
  "features": {
    "features": [
      {
        "id": null,
        "type": "Feature",
        "properties": {
          "severity": "Moderate",
          "area": [
            {
              "areaDesc": "Yellowhead Co. near Cadomin and Robb",
              "polygon": ["..."],
              "geocode": [
                {
                  "valueName": "layer:EC-MSC-SMC:1.0:CLC",
                  "value": "071210"
                },
                {
                  "valueName": "profile:CAP-CP:Location:0.3",
                  "value": "4814003"
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "areaDesc": "Banff Nat. Park near Lake Louise",
              "polygon": ["..."],
              "geocode": [
                {
                  "valueName": "layer:EC-MSC-SMC:1.0:CLC",
                  "value": "071430"
                },
                {
                  "valueName": "profile:CAP-CP:Location:0.3",
                  "value": "4815032"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "type": "CAP_INFO",
          "featureType": "CAP_INFO",
          "isCancellation": false,
          "..."
        },
        "incidentType": null,
        "sourceId": null
      }
    ],
    "incidentType": null,
    "metadata": null,
    "type": "FeatureCollection",
    "sourceId": null
  },
  "exposureAreas": {
    "features": [
      {
        "id": null,
        "type": "Feature",
        "properties": {
          "exposureLevel": 1
        },
        "geometry": {
          "type": "MultiPolygon",
          "coordinates": [...]
        },
        "sourceId": null
      }
    ],
    "type": "FeatureCollection"
  },
  "exposureAssessment": {
    "population": 95900.0,
    "capital": 13457305600.0,
    "exposureLevels": [
      {
        "level": "1",
        "data": {
          "population": 95900.0,
          "capital": 13457305600.0,
          "foodNeedsUnit": "CAL",
          "foodNeeds": 20139000.0,
          "waterNeedsUnit": "liter",
          "waterNeeds": 28770.0,
          "wasteNeedsUnit": "100 liter",
          "wasteNeeds": 959.0,
          "shelterNeedsUnit": "sq meters",
          "shelterNeeds": 33085.5
        },
        "exposureDescription": "LIMITED"
      }
    ],
    "hazardUuid": "",
    "hazardType": "",
    "version": "",
    "timestamp": "1771276559635",
    "exposureDescription": "",
    "foodNeedsUnit": "CAL",
    "foodNeeds": 20139000.0,
    "waterNeedsUnit": "liter",
    "waterNeeds": 28770.0,
    "wasteNeedsUnit": "100 liter",
    "wasteNeeds": 959.0,
    "shelterNeedsUnit": "sq meters",
    "shelterNeeds": 33085.5
  },
  "type": "SEVEREWEATHER",
  "creator": "RICHTER",
  "source": null,
  "startedAt": 1771156945,
  "updatedAt": 1771276559,
  "endedAt": 1771333363
}

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 CAP metadata fields such as note, references, rawMessage, eventCode, and headlineDescription. The features collection contains many CAP_INFO area features (one per alert zone covering multiple Alberta municipalities and parks), only a representative subset is shown here.