Noaa Tides

What Noaa Tides does

Noaa Tides exposes NOAA Tides & Currents data through MCP. Its tools cover station discovery and metadata, predicted tides, observed water levels, observed currents, meteorological observations, and vertical datums. The upstream data source is the NOAA API at https://api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/.

Queries use NOAA’s seven-digit station identifiers. Date ranges accept either yyyyMMdd or yyyyMMdd HH:mm formats. Depending on the tool, requests can select datums, intervals, units, time zones, current bins, station types, or meteorological products.

The integration is independent and unofficial; it is not affiliated with or endorsed by NOAA.

How it works

The hosted MCP endpoint is:

https://gateway.pipeworx.io/noaa-tides/mcp

An MCP client can connect to that URL directly. The endpoint lists the Noaa Tides tools and also includes shared Pipeworx gateway tools such as ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, and remember/recall. These shared tools can route questions across the wider Pipeworx catalog. A full gateway connection at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp exposes the broader catalog directly instead.

HTTP clients can invoke tools without MCP by sending requests to the gateway’s /v1/tools/ endpoints. For example, station searches can be made with POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/stations and a JSON request body.

Setup and configuration

For a hosted connection, add the MCP URL to the client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noaa-tides": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/noaa-tides/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The npm package @pipeworx/mcp-noaa-tides provides a local stdio bridge. It forwards requests to the same hosted endpoint and therefore requires network access:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noaa-tides": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-noaa-tides"]
    }
  }
}

Anonymous use is available with a limit of 50 calls per day. Setting PIPEWORX_API_KEY adds an account key and raises the limit to 200 calls per day. The key is sent as a Bearer token. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 with the local bridge to list the shared gateway tools in addition to the pack-specific tools. When using an HTTPS proxy, newer Node versions can use it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set.

Tools and capabilities

• stations lists tide, current, or water-level stations.
• station_metadata retrieves metadata for one station.
• predictions returns tide predictions for a date range.
• water_level retrieves observed water levels.
• currents retrieves observed currents, with optional bin selection.
• met_obs retrieves meteorological observations such as wind, air temperature, and water temperature.
• datums returns the vertical datums for a station.

Limitations and notes

The service depends on network access and has no offline mode. NOAA station IDs must be seven digits, and each request must use the date formats supported by the tools. The hosted endpoint does not require an account for initial calls, but anonymous and authenticated usage have different daily limits.