Historical Weather Conditions
Learn how to get historical current conditions data for a specific location.
Overview
Historical weather conditions data provides us valuable insights into the weather patterns for a particular location. It also helps us predict what the weather may be like given a certain weather pattern that has existed over the last few hours.
Historical current conditions endpoints
In this lesson, we learn how to retrieve the historical current conditions data for a specific location for the past 6 hours and the past 24 hours.
Past 6 hour conditions
We make a GET request to the following URL to get the historical weather conditions data for the past six hours for a location of our choice:
http://dataservice.accuweather.com/currentconditions/v1/{locationKey}/historical
Past 24 hour conditions
Similarly, we make a GET request to the following URL to get the historical weather conditions data for the past 24 hours for a location of our choice:
http://dataservice.accuweather.com/currentconditions/v1/{locationKey}/historical/24
Input parameters
The table below shows the list of input parameters for both endpoints.
Parameter | Type | Category | Description |
| string | required | This is our API key. This is a query parameter. |
| integer | required | This is the key of the location. This is a path parameter. |
| string | optional | This is the language in which we have to return the results. Its default value is “en-us.” This is a query parameter. |
| boolean | optional | This is set to "True" to include full details in the response, otherwise it is set to "False." Its default value is "False." This is a query parameter. |
Sample code
In the code below, we enter 351409, which is the location key for Seattle, United States, for the parameter locationKey on line 1.
Note: Please refer to the appendix for a list of some well-known cities along with their location keys.
You can try adding the optional parameters, language and details, to the URLs on lines 3–4 and 6–7 to fine-tune your results for the past 6 hours and the past 24 hours, respectively.
Click the "Run" button to see the output.
locationKey = 351409url6Hour = 'http://dataservice.accuweather.com/currentconditions/v1/' \+ str(locationKey) + '/historical?apikey={{API_KEY}}'url24Hour = 'http://dataservice.accuweather.com/currentconditions/v1/' \+ str(locationKey) + '/historical/24?apikey={{API_KEY}}'res6Hour = requests.get(url6Hour)res24Hour = requests.get(url24Hour)printResponse(res6Hour)printResponse(res24Hour)
The above code displays the historical weather conditions data for the specified location for the past 6 hours and for the past 24 hours, including some of the important response parameters given in the table below. In case of failure, an appropriate error message is displayed.
Response parameters
Parameter | Type | Description |
| boolean | This indicates whether there is any precipitation or not. |
| boolean | This indicates whether it's daytime or not. |
| object | This provides the temperature information. |
| object | This provides the “feels like” temperature information. |
| object | This contains wind speed and wind direction values. |
| integer | This provides the humidity value. |
| integer | This is the measure of the ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This value may be NULL. |
| object | This contains visibility information. |
| string | This is the URL of AccuWeather's website for a detailed forecast. |
| string | This is the URL of AccuWeather's mobile site for a detailed forecast. |
Note: The list of response parameters above is not exhaustive. Please refer to the appendix for details of the response.