Get forecasts

Use this action to retrieve the raw forecast data from Environment Canada for one of your weather entities. It returns both the daily forecast and the hourly forecast, which you can use in later steps of the same automation or script, for example to build a template sensor with the upcoming conditions.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To get forecasts from an automation or a script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation or script, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. If you’re setting up a new automation, add a trigger in the When section. Scripts don’t need a trigger. They run when something else calls them.
4. In the Then do section, select Add action.
5. Select what you want to control. Under By target (see Targets), select the weather entity you want to read.
6. From the actions shown for that target, select Get forecasts.
7. In the Response variable field, enter a name to store the data in, such as forecasts.
8. Select Save.

Options in the UI

This action has no additional options in the UI.

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

In YAML, refer to this action as environment_canada.get_forecasts. Store the result in a response variable so you can use it in later steps:

action: environment_canada.get_forecasts
target:
  entity_id: weather.home
response_variable: forecasts

This stores the daily and hourly forecast of weather.home in forecasts.

Targets of the action

This action requires a target. The target is the object of the action. You can point the action at a single entityAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more], a device, an area, a floor, or a label, and Home Assistant will run the action on every matching weather entity behind that target.

• Entity: one specific weather entity, such as weather.living_room.
• Device: every weather entity that belongs to a device.
• Area: every weather entity in a room or area.
• Floor: every weather entity on a floor.
• Label: every weather entity that shares a label.

You can also select different target types in one action. For example, you can add a specific entity and an area as targets in the same action to run the action on both of them at once.

Response data

The response is keyed by the entity ID of each targeted weather entity. For every entity, the response holds two lists:

• daily_forecast: The daily forecast entries.
• hourly_forecast: The hourly forecast entries.

Each entry has a timestamp field along with the forecast fields provided by Environment Canada, such as text_summary, temperature, and the precipitation probability.

weather.home:
  daily_forecast:
    - timestamp: "2024-01-01T12:00:00+00:00"
      text_summary: Sunny
      temperature: 4
  hourly_forecast:
    - timestamp: "2024-01-01T13:00:00+00:00"
      temperature: 3

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Open Developer tools > Actions, search for this action, fill in the fields, and select Perform action. You see what happens on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] without writing a line of YAML.

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related actions

These actions work well alongside this one:

• Get alerts: Retrieves the active weather alerts for an Environment Canada location.

• Set radar type: Sets the type of radar imagery shown by an Environment Canada radar camera.