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NWS damage survey photos

noaa:nws-damage-photos, available since v0.34, serves the photographs NWS surveyors attach to damage points in the Damage Assessment Toolkit, from the same public ArcGIS feature service as noaa:nws-damage-surveys, checked on 2026-09-29. Each photo is one asset: the JPEG or PNG exactly as the service stores it.

  • Both timestamps are required, in UTC, and may span at most 7 days. The window selects the damage points whose stormdate falls in it, inclusive at both ends; the storm-time caveats of the surveys guide apply unchanged, and matter more here, because older photographed points often carry only their date at 00:00 UTC.
  • A bbox or location selects points inside it, on the server.
  • -p office=, -p efscale=, -p include_undated=true, and -p as_of= select points exactly as they do for the surveys' points layer.
  • variables is rejected, and so is free text.
usdata fetch noaa:nws-damage-photos --start 2024-05-06T12:00Z --end 2024-05-07T12:00Z \
  -p office=TSA -p efscale=EF4 --dry-run
usdata fetch noaa:nws-damage-photos --start 2011-04-27 --end 2011-04-28 \
  --bbox -87.75,34.30,-87.65,34.40 -p efscale=EF5

Listing, and what it costs

Listing makes three kinds of request: the point ids matching the query, the points' storm time, rating, and location, 2000 points at a time, and their attachments through queryAttachments, 100 points at a time. That service stops at 2000 attachments per answer without saying so, so an answer that reaches the limit is asked again in halves. The 1,465 photos on 735 points from 27 and 28 April 2011 listed in 23 seconds.

Photos are large. The 38 photos from Tulsa's points on the night of 6 May 2024 total 226 MB, about 6 MB each; those 1,465 from April 2011 total 358 MB. Every asset carries the size the service lists, so --dry-run says what a fetch would move before anything is downloaded, and a fetched file of any other size is refused and removed.

What each asset says

  • id: nws_damage_photo_<point objectid>_<attachment id>.jpg or .png. Attachment ids are unique across the layer and do not change.
  • href: .../FeatureServer/0/<point objectid>/attachments/<attachment id>.
  • media_type and size, from the attachment listing.
  • time: the point's storm time as an instant, or none for an undated point.
  • bbox: the point's position, a box of no extent.
  • properties: point_objectid and point_globalid, which join a photo to its point in noaa:nws-damage-surveys with layer=points; efscale, the point's rating when it has one; and name, the file name the photo was uploaded under, which often holds the camera's own name and time. The JPEG states none of these, and the EXIF position is present on some photos only.

Thumbnails

Many points surveyed before 2017 hold a small copy of each photo beside it, and both are listed, as the service holds them. Two patterns were seen:

  • The same file name twice. Point 25520, at Phil Campbell, Alabama, holds 20110501_160432_IMG_0342.JPG as attachment 15668 (167,209 bytes) and again as 20831 (7,015 bytes). In 2012, 1,207 of the 2,590 photos on points were such pairs; the smaller copy was at most 22.8 KB, and the two checked were 192 pixels wide. The copies' attachment ids run in one block, 20,831 to about 25,700, as if made in one batch.
  • A thumb_ prefix, as thumb_3svr7MzL_1370093531000.jpg (54,580 bytes) beside its 1,038,213-byte original.

The Phil Campbell thumbnails in the walkthrough carry no EXIF, where their photos do.

The adapter does not drop either. Neither rule is reliable: point 2016826 holds two same-named copies of 11,475 and 12,092 bytes, which a size rule would split into a photo and its thumbnail. Use size to tell them apart; the walkthrough drops the smaller of each same-named pair.

What is not served

Files attached to tracks (177) and damage areas (35) are not photos of damage points: PNG radar images, PDF survey summaries, a panorama PDF, video, and one zip archive. They are left out, as is any attachment of a point whose type is not JPEG or PNG; none was seen in the probes.

Some photos come from the public or partners rather than NWS staff. The NWS disclaimer says "Third-party information and imagery are used under license by the individual third-party provider", and nothing in the listing says which photos those are.

Probes

Checked on 2026-09-29.

B='https://services.dat.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/nws_damageassessmenttoolkit/DamageViewer/FeatureServer'
curl -G "$B/0/queryAttachments" -d objectIds=3989962,3989963 -d f=json     # two JPEGs, 1.9 and 3.5 MB
curl -G "$B/0/queryAttachments" --data-urlencode "definitionExpression=stormdate >= TIMESTAMP '2011-01-01 00:00:00' AND stormdate < TIMESTAMP '2012-01-01 00:00:00'" \
  -d f=json                                                                    # exactly 2000, no flag
curl -o thumb.jpg "$B/0/28647/attachments/21730"                            # 5,228 bytes, 192 x 144
curl -o photo.jpg "$B/0/28647/attachments/16567"                            # 577,848 bytes, 2048 x 1536
curl -G "$B/1/queryAttachments" --data-urlencode 'definitionExpression=1=1' -d f=json   # 177: PNG, JPEG, PDF, video, zip

Metadata sources

  • What the DAT is and how data reach the public service: NWS Service Change Notice 22-84.
  • Attachment fields, types, sizes, and the silent cap: the feature service, layer 0's attachmentProperties and queryAttachments, probed as above.
  • Temporal extent: the earliest photographed point with a real storm time is a 1974 Super Outbreak reconstruction, 1974-04-03; four points dated with the 1970-01-01 placeholder also carry photos.
  • Terms and license: the NWS disclaimer, for NWS information and for third-party imagery.
  • Citation: the DAT publishes no citation form.
  • Latency and update frequency: as for the surveys; photos arrive with their points.
  • The 7-day window is the adapter's own bound on how many requests one listing makes.

NOAA access notes.

Reference

noaa:nws-damage-photos · Released · Included since usdata 0.34. NWS Damage Survey Photos.

At a glance

  • Files: JPEG, PNG
  • Selection: Each JPEG or PNG attached to a damage point with storm time in an inclusive UTC window of at most 7 days
  • Required inputs: Both timestamps; optionally a bbox, offices, EF ratings, undated points, or as_of
  • Open locally: Local files; no bundled reader for this format
  • On usdata.dev: Photos from NWS damage surveys, one file per damage point attachment, with a walkthrough

Parameters

Pass these as --param name=value to the CLI, as params: entries in a manifest, or as keyword arguments to build_query.

Parameter Meaning
as_of Read the service as it stood at this UTC instant, no earlier than its archive's start on 2020-11-25 and not in the future, so pages cannot drift; the live service by default.
efscale Rating(s) as the toolkit writes them: EF0 to EF5, EF3+, EFU, UNKNOWN, N/A, TSTM/Wind, or Tropical; case does not matter.
include_undated Also return features with no storm time, which match every window; false by default.
office NWS office code(s) that surveyed the damage, such as TSA or OUN; points and lines only, and a track shared by offices matches each of them.

Variables

Variable Units Meaning
image — The attached photograph, JPEG or PNG, as served

Catalog facts

  • Availability: since 0.34
  • Domain: Severe weather
  • Spatial resolution: One photo or more per surveyed damage point
  • Temporal resolution: The storm time of the point the photo is attached to, in UTC
  • Updates: As offices finish surveys, with no schedule: "Once quality-controlled, the data becomes available externally via a public web portal, as well as public Geographic Information System (GIS) services"
  • Longest query window: 7 days
  • Terms of use: https://www.weather.gov/disclaimer
  • Citation: NOAA National Weather Service, Damage Assessment Toolkit (DamageViewer feature service) damage point photographs, accessed via usdata
  • Catalog date range: 1974-04-03 to open-ended
  • Coverage varies by station, product, and date; the range above does not guarantee observations.
  • Upstream documentation
  • License: Public domain as NWS information; third-party images are used under their providers' licenses
  • Transport: http
  • Adapter: usdata.providers.noaa.nws_damage:NwsDamagePhotos