Discover the nearest NOAA CO-OPS stations to a marina's coordinates
domain: api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Call the Metadata API at https://api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/mdapi/prod/webapi/stations.json with a type filter (e.g., type=waterlevels, type=currents, or type=tidepredictions) to list candidate stations with lat/lng.
Compute distance from the marina's coordinates to each candidate to find the closest match, or start from a known nearby station ID.
If a nearby station ID is already known, call /webapi/stations/{id}/nearby.json?radius=N to list other stations within N nautical miles (default 2nm).
Confirm the selected station actually supports the product needed (e.g., a tide-prediction-only subordinate station will not have real-time water_level data).
Record the chosen station ID for reuse across prediction, water-level, and current queries.
Known gotchas
The Metadata API's 'nearby' resource is relative to an already-known station ID, not a raw lat/lon bounding-box search — for a completely unknown area you must pull the full typed station list and compute nearest yourself.
Station coverage is uneven; some marinas may only have a subordinate tide-prediction station (offset-adjusted estimates) rather than a real-time observing station nearby.
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