NDBC Buoy Data Request (of any type)

The NDBC keeps a 40-day recent rolling file for each buoy. This examples shows how to access the other types of data available for a buoy.

from siphon.simplewebservice.ndbc import NDBC

Request the types of data available from a given buoy.

data_aval = NDBC.buoy_data_types('42012')
print(data_aval)

{'txt': 'standard meteorological data', 'spec': 'spectral wave summaries', 'data_spec': 'raw spectral wave data', 'swdir': 'spectral wave data (alpha1)', 'swdir2': 'spectral wave data (alpha2)', 'swr1': 'spectral wave data (r1)', 'swr2': 'spectral wave data (r2)', 'supl': 'supplemental measurements data'}

Get a pandas data frame of all of the observations, meteorological data is the default observation set to query.

df = NDBC.realtime_observations('42012', data_type='supl')
df.head()

	hourly_low_pressure	hourly_low_pressure_time	hourly_high_wind	hourly_high_wind_direction	hourly_high_wind_time	time
0	1017.5	2025-09-12 19:20:00+00:00	3.0	140.0	2025-09-12 19:18:00+00:00	2025-09-12 19:20:00+00:00
1	1017.7	2025-09-12 19:10:00+00:00	3.0	140.0	2025-09-12 19:10:00+00:00	2025-09-12 19:10:00+00:00
2	1017.7	2025-09-12 19:00:00+00:00	3.0	120.0	2025-09-12 18:54:00+00:00	2025-09-12 19:00:00+00:00
3	1017.9	2025-09-12 18:50:00+00:00	2.0	130.0	2025-09-12 18:47:00+00:00	2025-09-12 18:50:00+00:00
4	1018.0	2025-09-12 18:40:00+00:00	2.0	130.0	2025-09-12 18:37:00+00:00	2025-09-12 18:40:00+00:00