Data Sources
Where WNYIMS information comes from
WNYIMS consolidates existing public information. It does not originate official warnings, and it never substitutes demonstration data for a live feed. When a provider is stale or unavailable, the map says so rather than showing stale records silently.
National Weather Service (api.weather.gov)
Active- Provides
- Official alerts
- Update cadence
- Every 3 minutes
Watches, warnings, advisories and statements with official polygons, affected zones, SAME/UGC codes, severity, urgency, certainty, effective and expiration times, updates and cancellations. Wording is reproduced as issued.
Known limitations: Alert areas can be county/zone-shaped rather than storm-shaped when the NWS issues a zone-based product. Feed outages are shown as Delayed or Unavailable rather than hidden.
Provider documentationIowa Environmental Mesonet — NEXRAD mosaic
Active- Provides
- Doppler radar
- Update cadence
- 5-minute frames
Animated national base-reflectivity mosaic derived from NOAA NEXRAD radar.
Known limitations: Mosaic imagery lags real time by several minutes and can show ground clutter, beam blockage, and anomalous propagation.
Provider documentationTomTom Traffic
Active- Provides
- Live traffic flow, segment speed & incidents
- Update cadence
- Near real time, on demand
Roadway congestion colouring, per-segment current speed on tap, and roadwork/closure/jam markers from TomTom's traffic services, shown only while the optional Live Traffic map layer is switched on. Requests are proxied by WNYIMS so the provider key is never exposed; tiles, segment lookups, and incident queries are limited to the visible map area and throttled.
Known limitations: Traffic flow, speeds, and incident records are commercial estimates, not official emergency reports. WNYIMS does not label TomTom data as 511NY, NYSDOT, or official roadway information, and TomTom incidents are never written into the WNYIMS incident feed. Coverage is limited to roads TomTom monitors.
Provider documentationMonroe County public incidents (incidents911.rss)
Active- Provides
- Publicly available incidents
- Update cadence
- Approximately every 60 seconds
Treated as temporary hazard information only. Records are removed once they leave the official feed and are not archived for historical statistics. Sensitive call types are suppressed and locations are generalized.
Known limitations: Monroe County only. The feed publishes a subset of activity, can lag or drop records, and is not a dispatch log. An empty list never means nothing is happening.
Provider documentationClearCut Radio — Monroe/Ontario Fire & EMS dispatch
Active- Provides
- Authorized radio-derived dispatch observations
- Update cadence
- Continuous monitoring, automatic publication
Connected. ClearCut dispatch audio is transcribed privately by a separately managed worker. Fire and EMS calls publish automatically as sanitized public observations after a short delay. Police publication is built and switched off; it stays off until police call recognition is validated, and when enabled police items will be held 15 to 30 minutes and show only a general activity type with a street-level or town-level location.
Known limitations: Radio traffic can be incomplete, clipped, repeated, or misunderstood. Audio is deleted immediately after transcription, private transcripts expire after 30 days, EMS locations are generalized, and public items never include transcripts, audio, unit identifiers, plates or names.
WNYIMS Field Reports
Active- Provides
- Verified field observations
- Update cadence
- Realtime
Community-submitted hazard reports and WNYIMS monitoring notices. Nothing becomes public automatically — a report must pass review and be explicitly approved for the public map.
Known limitations: Community reports are unverified until reviewed, and public locations are generalized. Volume depends entirely on who chooses to submit.
FEMA IPAWS
Not connected- Provides
- EAS / IPAWS alerts
- Update cadence
- —
Not connected. WNYIMS does not receive FEMA or EAS messages. All alert polygons, SAME/UGC zone codes and severity fields shown on this site are attributed to and sourced from the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov).
Known limitations: Non-weather IPAWS messages (for example AMBER alerts) are therefore not carried.
Airplanes.live (ADS-B / MLAT)
Active- Provides
- Aviation — aircraft positions
- Update cadence
- Cached 10 seconds
Aircraft positions, callsign, type, altitude, speed, track and transponder code within about 150 nautical miles of Caledonia, from a volunteer receiver network. Used for the Aircraft map layer, the emergency/mission transponder watch (7700, 7600, 7500, 1255, 1277) and aircraft-near-incident context.
Known limitations: Community receiver coverage is uneven and weakest at low altitude; aircraft without an operating transponder, and some military and blocked aircraft, never appear. Positions can be seconds to minutes old.
Provider documentationFAA Temporary Flight Restrictions (tfr.faa.gov)
Active- Provides
- Aviation — restricted airspace
- Update cadence
- Cached 5 minutes (geometry 30 minutes)
Official FAA TFR list plus the published NOTAM detail record, including purpose, effective and expiration times, altitude limits and the official area shape when the FAA publishes one.
Known limitations: Some restrictions publish no machine-readable shape; those are listed without a mapped area rather than estimated. Always confirm with official FAA sources before flight.
Provider documentationFAA National Airspace System status (nasstatus.faa.gov)
Active- Provides
- Aviation — airport operations
- Update cadence
- Cached 3 minutes
Ground stops, ground delay programs, airport closures and general arrival/departure delays for Buffalo (BUF), Rochester (ROC) and Niagara Falls (IAG).
Known limitations: Covers FAA traffic-management actions only. Individual flight cancellations, weather at the field and airline decisions are not represented.
Provider documentationAir traffic control radio audio
Not used- Provides
- Aviation — audio
- Update cadence
- —
WNYIMS does not stream, record, transcribe or interpret air traffic control radio, and does not operate local ADS-B or SDR receivers. Aviation awareness uses online data only.
Known limitations: Nothing on this site is derived from aviation radio traffic.
Livingston County radio-derived gateway
Planned- Provides
- Machine-transcribed fire/EMS activity
- Update cadence
- —
A receive-only foundation only. If ever enabled, events are labelled Machine Transcribed — Unverified, enter a review queue, and never publish automatically. Raw audio and full transcripts are never exposed publicly.
Known limitations: Not currently connected, so Livingston County fire/EMS activity is not represented on this site.
County incident coverage
Community hazard reports are accepted, subject to verification, in all fourteen Western New York counties. Agency incident feeds are connected only where noted below.
- Allegany CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Cattaraugus CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Chautauqua CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Erie CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Genesee CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Livingston CountySource not connected / plannedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Monroe CountyLive public feedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Niagara CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Ontario CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Orleans CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Steuben CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Wayne CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Wyoming CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
- Yates CountySource not connectedCommunity hazard reports: covered
Privacy handling
On this public map, fire, EMS and police calls derived from radio traffic are held for 15 to 30 minutes before they appear, generalized to a broad category, and shown as an approximate pin placed somewhere within about two miles of the actual location. The pin is not the address. Domestic violence, sexual assault, juvenile, mental-health, overdose, welfare-check, officer-distress, search, barricade and tactical calls are suppressed from public view entirely. Names, phone numbers, unit numbers, radio channels, plates and exact responder locations are never published.
Authorized signed-in accounts see the same calls without the hold and with the exact resolved location, under their agency’s access level.