GeoNames Forum

I have a few questions regarding the API service for current weather conditions...
1) What is the update rate of the API?
2) How many weather stations are located in USA? and if possible, globally?
3) What gets returned to the XML in the event that there is no data available?
4) What is the service availability (for instance, percent available per month)?

1) What is the update rate of the API?
It is updated every 20minutes. There is also a delay of some minutes in the reporting from the stations.

2) How many weather stations are located in USA? and if possible, globally?
US=3800, global=12000; not all of them report weather data. at this moment we have recent data from 4800 stations, 2060 in the US.
3) What gets returned to the XML in the event that there is no data available?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<geonames>
<status message="no observation found" value="15"/>
</geonames>

4) What is the service availability (for instance, percent available per month)?
http://api-status.com/6404/114066/GeoNames-API
The premium services have even higher availability.