General information
AccuWeather's Forecasts API delivers daily, hourly, quarter-day, and minute-by-minute precipitation forecasts for any location worldwide. Forecasts are available in more than 200 languages and dialects, in either imperial or metric units (metric=true for metric; imperial is the default).
All location-based forecasts (daily, hourly, quarter-day) require a LocationKey. Use the Locations API to look one up.
Daily forecasts
Available durations: 1, 5, 10, 15, 25, 45 and 90 days.
By default, the response includes a headline (effective date, severity, text), and per-day fields: date, temperature, day/night weather icon and phrase, plus mobile/web links. Pass details=true to unlock the full schema (RealFeel®, sun/moon, AirAndPollen, wind, humidity, and more).
→ See it in action: 5-Day Daily Forecast recipe
Hourly forecasts
Available durations: 1, 12, 24, 72 (~3 days), 120 (~5 days), and 240 hours (~10 days).
By default, each hour includes datetime, epoch datetime, weather icon, icon phrase, temperature, precipitation probability, IsDaylight, and mobile/web links. Pass details=true for the full schema (RealFeel®, wind, gust, humidity, UV index, cloud cover, and more).
→ See it in action: Hourly Forecast recipe
Quarter-day forecasts
Available durations: 1, 5, 10, and 15 days, with each day broken into four quarters: morning, afternoon, evening, and overnight. Useful when you want more granularity than daily but less than hourly.
MinuteCast™
Hyperlocal minute-by-minute precipitation forecasts for the next 120 minutes. Requires a latitude/longitude pair (truncated to two decimal places) — no LocationKey needed.
MinuteCast™ is not available in all regions. Unsupported locations return an HTTP 400 response. Cache these 400 responses for 72 hours to reduce data consumption and prolong device battery life.
MinuteCast™ Premium
Higher-resolution MinuteCast™ at 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15-minute intervals.
By default, each interval returns a summary, start datetime, start epoch datetime, minute index, dBZ value, and precipitation type. Pass details=true to also receive both a simplified and a full spectrum of colors associated with each minute's dBZ value.
The colors are also available as standalone endpoints — see …/minute/colors… (full spectrum) and …/minute/colors/simple… (simplified).