| Guide | GDE-084 |
| Topic | Weather history lookup |
| Domain | Geospatial and satellite |
| Last tested | 29 October 2026 |
Short answer: To check weather history for a photo, find the nearest airport station, pull its hourly METAR record for the claimed time in UTC and compare it with the image. Confirm the result against a satellite image before you rule a date in or out.
What is weather history?
Weather history is the recorded weather for a specific place and time, drawn from station observations, satellite images and reanalysis models, which investigators use to test whether a photo, video or account fits the conditions on the day it claims.
Most weather history comes from airport weather stations, which log temperature, wind, visibility, cloud and precipitation in a standard coded report called a METAR, usually every hour or half hour. Reanalysis is different: a model that reconstructs past weather on a grid, including places with no station. Daily satellite images add a third view, showing cloud and snow across a whole region at the moment of a pass.
Fact-checkers use weather history to test whether recycled footage fits a claimed date, reporters to check an account of a storm or flood, and verification teams to narrow when an undated image was taken. It rules dates out far more often than it proves one.
| • | Testing whether a photo or video matches the weather on the date it claims |
| • | Checking an eyewitness account of rain, snow, fog or high wind against the record |
| • | Spotting recycled footage from an earlier storm, flood or snowfall |
| • | Narrowing the possible dates of an undated image once its location is known |
| • | Confirming conditions at a place and time cited in a statement or report |
How do you check weather history for a date and place?
Confirm the location, pull the nearest station's observations for the claimed time, then test them against satellite imagery and a reanalysis model before you rule a date in or out.
All four tools are free for non-commercial use.
Meteostat: An open database of weather and climate records for thousands of stations and places worldwide, searchable by place or station, with daily and hourly data. Free to use, with data published under CC BY 4.0.
IEM ASOS archive: The Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of automated airport observations from around the world, downloadable by station and date with the raw METAR text, sky cover and present weather codes. Free, with no registration.
NASA Worldview: NASA's browser for full-resolution global daily satellite images, with imagery from 2000 to the present. Free, with no login needed to browse.
Open-Meteo Historical Weather API: Hourly modelled weather for any coordinate, built on ERA5 reanalysis from 1940 at about 25 km resolution and ERA5-Land from 1950 at about 11 km. Free for non-commercial use under CC BY 4.0; commercial use needs a paid plan.
What we tested: On 29 October 2026 we opened all four tools and ran one request against the IEM archive, using a public station (Heathrow, EGLL) and a past date, so no account, key or private data was involved. The IEM request worked; Meteostat, NASA Worldview and Open-Meteo were checked in part because their core lookups could not be run from this session, and none failed.
The front page opened (1 of 1 attempts) with no sign-in prompt, and the licence page confirms CC BY 4.0 with attribution required. The station search itself was not run. | ||
1 of 1 requests worked. A request for Heathrow (EGLL) on 15 January 2024, with times in UTC, returned 48 raw METAR reports at 30-minute spacing with no sign-in or key. The request used the archive's download script, so the web form's sky cover and present weather fields were read but not requested. | ||
The front page opened (1 of 1 attempts) with no sign-in prompt, and a NASA page puts MODIS imagery back to 2000. Browsing a layer for a chosen date was not run. | ||
The documentation shows ERA5 from 1940 at about 25 km and ERA5-Land from 1950 at about 11 km, and the terms confirm free non-commercial use under CC BY 4.0 with no key. A live query was not run because the fetch tool was blocked by the site's robots rules. |
This is a snapshot: one station, one date and one request, read through a web fetch tool rather than a browser, so it shows the tools were running that day and says nothing about their accuracy.
The Two-Source Rule: Rule a date in or out only when two independent sources agree, such as a station record and a satellite image. Treat a model value as support, never as the observation.