Questions about counties (was Re: [Xastir] wx boxes and warnings)

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Tue, 6 May 2003, Jack Twilley wrote:

> These files are in a special place because they're used for special
> reasons, right?  Is there any chance that someone who knows precisely
> what files to get and precisely where they are could write a script
> like fcc-get to pull them down, process them, and stick them in the
> right places?  It will be slightly more difficult as the filenames
> appear to change, but it would still be keen to tell new users "run
> nwsshp-get to update your NWS shapefiles", especially if the Counties
> directory moves under maps someday in a fit of rationality.

Yes.  That could be done.  Getting a file listing first would allow
you to figure out what the latest names are and then fetch them.


> All these weather alerts are *not* being passed over the air by
> default, but are being passed over the Internet?  I grew up in New
> England and the phone would inevitably go out just as I'd want to know
> more about incoming storms -- why aren't these propagated over RF?

Some of the NWS offices are set up to send some of the info over the
airwaves.  I think the WXsvr sends additional info and types of
packets though that aren't able to be sent by the NWS offices
currently.

Also, some stations are gating the weather alerts to RF, and
probably some of the weather objects as well (although Xastir can't
do the latter yet).

This is definitely an area that can be given much more thought.  I
also don't like the idea of the Wxsvr being a single point of
failure.  It'd be nice to have one of those things in at least each
region if not each state.

-- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
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