1. GIS Mainpage
  2. Archived Local Storm Reports Shapefiles

This page allows you to generate a GIS shapefile of NWS issued Local Storm Reports for a time period of your choice. Please be sure to read the archive status and dbf schema below. The IEM's archive is certainly not complete or official.

If you are looking for a real-time source of lsrs, you can find with the following files generated every 5 minutes: ESRI Shapefile, Comma Delimited, GeoJSON.

Looking to automate the downloading of LSRs?
You can use the following URI form to get the most recent number of seconds worth of LSRs. Note that these times are based on the valid time of the LSR and not the issuance of the text product itself that contained the LSR.
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/request/gis/lsr.py?wfo=ALL&recent=86400&fmt=csv
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/request/gis/lsr.py?wfo=DMX,DVN&recent=86400&fmt=csv
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/request/gis/lsr.py?state=IA&recent=86400&fmt=csv
Omit the fmt=csv portion to return the zipped shapefile.

Example to fetch a month's worth of data
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/request/gis/lsr.py?wfo=JAN&sts=2020-08-01T00:00Z&ets=2020-09-01T00:00Z&fmt=csv

Backend documentation exists for those wishing to script against this service.

Limit Weather Forecast Office (WFO)

Limit by State

Limit by Report Type

Select time interval

(Times are in UTC. Local Storm Reports with an event time valid between these times selected below will be included in the output GIS file...)
YearMonthDay HourMinute
Start:
End:

Download Format:

Shapefile DBF schema:

VALID    Timestamp of LSR in GMT/UTC time
MAG      Magnitude value of the LSR
WFO      Weather Forecast Office originating the LSR
TYPECODE 1 character identifier of the report type, IEM specific
TYPETEXT Textual value of LSR type used in report
CITY     Location used for the LSR 
COUNTY   County/Parish of the LSR city
STATE    Two character state abbreviation
SOURCE   Who reported the LSR
REMARK   Text summary with the LSR
LAT      Latitude
LON      Longitude
UGC      IEM computed NWS UGC code (6 character), sometimes null
UGCNAME  IEM computed NWS UGC name (128 character), sometimes null
QUALIFY  1 char describing if the MAG is Estimated, Measured, or Unknown

Archive notes: