download NOAA's Storm Events Database to identify historical hail events for storm-restoration lead targeting
domain: www.ncei.noaa.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Open the NCEI Storm Events Database bulk data page and note that coverage runs from January 1950 to the current month, updated roughly 75-90 days after month end
Download the CSV files you need over FTP (ftp://ftp.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/swdi/stormevents/csvfiles/) or the mirrored HTTP path
Reference the Storm-Data-Bulk-csv-Format.pdf in the same directory to map column names (event type, state, begin/end date, magnitude, county/zone) before parsing
Filter parsed rows to hail-related EVENT_TYPE values to build a county- or zone-level history of hail events
For narrower, token-authenticated programmatic queries instead of full bulk files, use NCEI's companion CDO Web Services API (v2) at ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/api/v2
Known gotchas
This is a bulk file download, not a live filtered query API — there is no endpoint for 'hail events near this address since date X'; you download and filter the CSVs yourself, or use the separate CDO Web Services API with its own dataset/token model
Data lags real time by roughly 75-90 days, so it suits recent-but-not-immediate storm lead lists, not same-day dispatch
Hail size and event boundaries are reported by individual NWS offices and vary in precision — treat this as a targeting signal, not a survey-grade damage assessment
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