The Scenario
The project manager just forwarded you a handoff note from the engineer who left last month. You've inherited a Google Sheet with 50 survey coordinates for a seawall project. The terrain profile is due to the structural team on Thursday and it needs the elevation — or water depth for offshore points — at each coordinate. The previous engineer used a manual API workflow that nobody documented. You have the sheet. You don't have the script.
The bad version:
- Read the Stormglass elevation API documentation, figure out the correct endpoint and query format, and run a test call for coordinate one.
- Interpret the response — positive values are above sea level, negative values mean the point is below sea level (offshore or underwater) — and paste the value into column C.
- Repeat this for the remaining 49 rows, noting which values are negative so the structural team knows which points are submerged.
Fifty rows, one API call each, no automation, and a structural deadline Thursday morning.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the coordinate columns, understands the elevation lookup use case, and through its built-in Stormglass.io connection it queries the elevation endpoint for every row and writes the result — including a flag for negative (below sea level) values — directly into column C. No documentation to navigate. No script to inherit.
For each latitude/longitude pair in columns A and B, fetch the Stormglass elevation value and write it into column C. If the value is negative, also write "Below sea level" in column D to flag offshore or submerged points.
What You Get
- Column C filled with elevation values in meters for each of the 50 coordinates.
- Column D containing "Below sea level" for any row where the elevation returned by Stormglass is negative — so the structural team can immediately spot offshore points without manually scanning for negatives.
- No blank rows — rows where Stormglass returns no data get a note rather than an empty cell.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Coordinates are stored as a single "lat, lng" string in column A instead of split across two columns
The previous engineer stored everything in one cell: "48.8566, 2.3522." Stormglass needs them split.
Split the coordinates in column A into separate latitude and longitude values in columns B and C — assume the format is "lat, lng" — then fetch the Stormglass elevation for each coordinate pair and write the result into column D. Flag negative values as "Below sea level" in column E.
You only want elevations for points in the "Offshore Survey" zone flagged in column D
The sheet covers multiple survey zones. The structural report only needs offshore elevations right now.
For rows where column D says "Offshore Survey," fetch the Stormglass elevation for the lat/lng in columns A and B and write the elevation into column C. If the value is negative, write "Submerged" in column E.
Some coordinates fall on land and the team needs a separate elevation tier noted
The terrain profile needs to distinguish shallow-water coordinates (−1 to −5 m) from deep offshore points (below −5 m) and above-sea-level land points.
For each coordinate in columns A and B, fetch the Stormglass elevation and write the value into column C. Then write a tier label in column D: "Land" for positive values, "Shallow" for −1 to −5, "Deep offshore" for below −5.
Dedup coordinates, split combined cells, classify elevation tiers, and flag missing data
Some rows are duplicated, some coordinates are in combined "lat, lng" cells in column A, and you need the full terrain classification before Thursday's handoff.
Remove duplicate rows, split any combined "lat, lng" values in column A into separate columns B and C. Fetch Stormglass elevation for each unique coordinate. Write elevation in column C. Write a tier label in column D — Land, Shallow, or Deep offshore. Write "No data" in column E for any coordinate where Stormglass returns nothing.
Getting to a clean, tiered, flagged output in one prompt means the structural team receives the terrain profile ready to use — not a spreadsheet they have to interpret.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Google Sheet with survey coordinates, then ask it to pull Stormglass elevation values for every point and classify them by depth tier. The Stormglass.io integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. You might also see fetching weather forecasts by coordinate or the Stormglass.io overview.