Quickstart

From nothing to a downloaded GRIB in under 10 minutes.

1. Get an account and a token

1. Sign in (or sign up) at weatherfiles.com.
2. Open Account → API tokens, click Create token, name it (e.g. "my-laptop"), and copy the wf_pat_… string. It is shown only once.

export WF_TOKEN=wf_pat_paste_yours_here

2. List the models you can access

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $WF_TOKEN" \
  https://api.weatherfiles.com/v1/models | jq '.[].id'

Free accounts can access harm-nl; Pro unlocks all 27+. Each model entry carries its bounds, params, resolution and run cadence — everything you need to build a request.

3. Download a GRIB

One-shot, no saved slice — pick a model, params, a bounding box (west,east,south,north) and a horizon in hours:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $WF_TOKEN" -L -o forecast.grib2 \
  "https://api.weatherfiles.com/v1/grib?model=harm-nl&params=wind,gusts,pressure&bbox=3,7,51,54&time_window_h=48"

Open forecast.grib2 in XyGrib, Expedition, qtVlm or LuckGrib — our model-specific encoding fixes mean it renders correctly out of the box.

4. (Optional) Save a slice for repeat downloads

Want a permanent, refreshable URL instead of a one-shot fetch? Create a slice (POST /v1/slices) and download it from GET /v1/dl/<token> — see the reference. Slices are the right primitive for saved / shareable downloads; /v1/grib is for scripts and one-offs.

Next: managing tokens · full API reference.