NOAA Storm Events Database (NCEI): what it returns, and whether it works in Clay

NOAA Storm Events Database (NCEI) is not available in Clay. It is best for Diligence, Content demo, Buying signals. Pricing: Free. Access: Free public data, no key, bulk CSV downloads and web search. Licence: US government work, no published restrictions found. Not anonymised, but event level, not property level..

Data domains: Government, Weather, Geography, Signals.

What does NOAA Storm Events Database (NCEI) return?

Official fields (read from the 2026 details CSV header): BEGIN_YEARMONTH; BEGIN_DAY; BEGIN_TIME; END_YEARMONTH; END_DAY; END_TIME; EPISODE_ID; EVENT_ID; STATE; STATE_FIPS; YEAR; MONTH_NAME; EVENT_TYPE; CZ_TYPE; CZ_FIPS; CZ_NAME; WFO; BEGIN_DATE_TIME; CZ_TIMEZONE; END_DATE_TIME; INJURIES_DIRECT; INJURIES_INDIRECT; DEATHS_DIRECT; DEATHS_INDIRECT; DAMAGE_PROPERTY; DAMAGE_CROPS; SOURCE; MAGNITUDE; MAGNITUDE_TYPE; FLOOD_CAUSE; CATEGORY; TOR_F_SCALE; TOR_LENGTH; TOR_WIDTH; TOR_OTHER_WFO; TOR_OTHER_CZ_STATE; TOR_OTHER_CZ_FIPS; TOR_OTHER_CZ_NAME; BEGIN_RANGE; BEGIN_AZIMUTH; BEGIN_LOCATION; END_RANGE; END_AZIMUTH; END_LOCATION; BEGIN_LAT; BEGIN_LON; END_LAT; END_LON; EPISODE_NARRATIVE; EVENT_NARRATIVE; DATA_SOURCE. MAGNITUDE holds hail size in inches or wind speed in knots depending on event type.

What can you derive from it?

1. County storm exposure: count of hail events at 1 inch or larger and wind events above 58 mph per county per year, which sizes the roofing and restoration addressable market. 2. Damage-weighted heat map: sum DAMAGE_PROPERTY by county to rank where insurance-funded rebuild work is concentrated. 3. Trend shift: compare five-year rolling event counts to spot regions where hail or flood frequency is rising. 4. Tornado path footprint: TOR_LENGTH and TOR_WIDTH with begin and end coordinates give a damage corridor for post-event canvassing. 5. Event narrative mining: EVENT_NARRATIVE text names towns, roads and damage types (roofs, trees, power lines) that a model can tag.

How would a GTM team use it?

1. PE screen: rank metros by ten-year severe hail and wind frequency to pick add-on targets for a roofing or restoration roll-up. 2. Diligence: check whether a target's revenue spikes line up with storm years in its counties, which separates storm-chasing revenue from repeatable demand. 3. Revenue trigger: for a portco, build a quarterly list of counties with fresh large-hail events and route marketing spend there. 4. Content demo: post a county map of 2025 hail damage dollars next to the location of the largest roofing roll-ups. 5. Territory planning: score each branch's catchment by historical storm load to set sales targets and crew capacity.

What are the caveats?

Not a native Clay integration as of 2026-10-17 (checked against Clay's integrations catalog). Can be called through Clay's HTTP API column where an API exists. This is the official record, not a real-time feed: the 2026 details file published on 18 September 2026 runs only through June 2026, so expect a lag of roughly three months. Locations are reported points or zones, not swaths, so property-level hit lists need radar-derived products. DAMAGE_PROPERTY is an estimate with K and M suffixes and is often blank. Event counts depend on spotter reports and population density, so rural areas are under-reported.