MeteoSwiss Open Data

Access Swiss weather data from MeteoSwiss Open Government Data. Free, no API key. All data from data.geo.admin.ch. CSVs use semicolon (;) delimiters. Metadata CSVs are Latin1 — pipe through iconv -f latin1 -t utf-8.

Quick Reference

STAC API base: https://data.geo.admin.ch/api/stac/v1

1. Get Current Weather

# Get weather for Zurich (station SMA) — key columns: tre200s0 (temp °C),
# ure200s0 (humidity %), rre150z0 (precip mm), fu3010z0 (wind km/h)
curl -s 'https://data.geo.admin.ch/ch.meteoschweiz.messwerte-aktuell/VQHA80.csv' \
  | awk -F';' 'NR==1 || $1=="SMA"'

Full parameter list in ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/REFERENCE.md. Missing values appear as empty fields or -. Timestamps are YYYYMMDDHHmm in UTC.

2. Find Stations

# Search weather stations by name (Latin1 encoded)
curl -s 'https://data.geo.admin.ch/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-smn/ogd-smn_meta_stations.csv' \
  | iconv -f latin1 -t utf-8 \
  | awk -F';' 'NR==1 || tolower($0) ~ /zurich/'

Columns: station_abbr, station_name, station_canton, station_height_masl, station_coordinates_wgs84_lat, station_coordinates_wgs84_lon.

# Search forecast locations (~6000 points: stations, postal codes, mountains)
# NOTE: Asset key has a known typo "forcasting" — always get URL from STAC
META_URL=$(curl -s 'https://data.geo.admin.ch/api/stac/v1/collections/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-local-forecasting' \
  | jq -r '[.assets | to_entries[] | select(.key | contains("meta_point")) | .value.href] | first')
curl -s "$META_URL" | iconv -f latin1 -t utf-8 \
  | awk -F';' 'NR==1 || $3 ~ /8001/'  # search by postal code

Point columns: point_id, point_type_id (1=station, 2=postal_code, 3=mountain), postal_code, station_abbr, point_name.

3. Get Forecasts

Two steps: get the latest STAC item, then download parameter CSVs.

# Step 1: Get latest forecast item
ITEM=$(curl -s 'https://data.geo.admin.ch/api/stac/v1/collections/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-local-forecasting/items?limit=10' \
  | jq -r '[.features[].id] | sort | reverse | .[0]')

# Step 2: Get a parameter CSV (e.g., daily max temperature for Zurich station, point_id=48)
ASSET_URL=$(curl -s "https://data.geo.admin.ch/api/stac/v1/collections/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-local-forecasting/items/$ITEM" \
  | jq -r '[.assets | to_entries[] | select(.key | contains("tre200dx"))] | sort_by(.key) | last | .value.href')
curl -s "$ASSET_URL" | awk -F';' 'NR==1 || $1=="48"'

Station forecasts (point_type_id=1) have daily params: tre200dx (max temp), tre200dn (min temp), rka150d0 (precip), jp2000d0 (weather icon). Postal codes/mountains (type 2,3) have hourly params: tre200h0, rre150h0, jww003i0 — aggregate to daily by grouping on first 8 timestamp chars. Common point_ids: Zurich=48, Bern=29, Geneva=53.

4. Get Pollen Data

# Stations: BAS, BER, BUC, DAV, GEN, LAU, LOG, LUG, LUZ, MUN, NEU, VIS, ZUE
# Use lowercase in URLs
curl -s 'https://data.geo.admin.ch/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-pollen/zue/ogd-pollen_zue_d_now.csv' \
  | iconv -f latin1 -t utf-8 \
  | awk -F';' 'NR==1{print} {last=$0} END{print last}'

Columns: station_abbr, Date, then pollen types (BIR=birch, GRA=grass, etc.) in particles/m³.

Error Handling

• Station not found: Check metadata CSV (Section 2) for valid abbreviations
• Empty data: Station may be offline — try a nearby station
• 403/404 on pollen: Verify abbreviation is lowercase and is a pollen station (~13 total)
• Garbled text: You're reading Latin1 as UTF-8 — add iconv -f latin1 -t utf-8

Bundled Scripts

Token-efficient CLI tools that output structured key=value pairs. Use these instead of raw curl when available — they handle encoding, error checking, and output parsing.

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/current-weather.sh SMA          # current weather for Zurich
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/search-stations.sh zurich        # find weather stations
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/search-forecast-points.sh 8001   # find forecast point_id by postal code
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/forecast.sh 48                   # forecast for Zurich (point_id=48)
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/pollen.sh ZUE                    # pollen data for Zurich

All scripts accept --help for usage details. Requires: curl, awk, iconv. Forecast also needs jq.

MCP Server Alternative

For complex queries (fuzzy search, geocoding, structured JSON), use the MCP server: claude mcp add meteoswiss https://meteoswiss-mcp.ars.is/mcp

Full Reference

See ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/REFERENCE.md for all parameters, weather icon codes, and STAC collections.