Possible stale webcam images despite recent lastUpdatedOn timestamps

AdreasGr

Hello Team,

I am using the Windy Webcams API V3 to display webcam preview images from Greece in a weather livestream project.

During extended monitoring, I noticed that some webcams return images that appear to be several months old, and in a few cases approximately one year old. The old date is visibly embedded in the camera image itself.

However, the API may still return a recent value in the lastUpdatedOn field for these webcams. This makes it difficult to determine whether the actual webcam image is current or whether Windy has simply checked or processed the same old image recently.

I have observed this behaviour with multiple webcams.

Could you please clarify what the lastUpdatedOn field represents?

Does it indicate:

The actual capture time of the webcam image,
The time Windy last retrieved or processed the image,
Or the time the webcam record was last checked?

It would be very helpful if the API could provide the actual image capture timestamp, when available, or automatically flag and remove webcams that repeatedly return the same stale image for long periods.

I can provide webcam IDs, API response samples and screenshots if needed.

Thank you for your time and for maintaining the Webcams API.

Kind regards,

Andreas
MeteoPatras.eu

WinnieMP

Hello Andreas, @AdreasGr, Thank you for your feedback. Could you please send us an email at webcams@windy.com with a link to this Community post, along with a few examples of webcams that you believe are not up to date? Ideally, please include the Windy webcam IDs. You can find them in the webcam URL after opening the webcam in your browser—for example: 1704893132. This will help our developers investigate the issue more efficiently. Thank you in advance! KR, Marketa

AdreasGr

@WinnieMP Hello Marketa,

Thank you for your reply and for forwarding the issue to the appropriate team.

I have now sent an email to webcams@windy.com with a link to this Community post, along with three specific webcam examples, their Windy webcam IDs, API lastUpdatedOn values, and screenshots showing the outdated images.

I hope this information will help your developers investigate the issue.

Thank you again for your assistance.

Kind regards,
Andreas
MeteoPatras.eu