[Xastir] NEXRAD decoder?

[Gerry Creager N5JXS]

Tyler Allison wrote:
>>I do create a rectilinear (non-projected flat product for the
>>NM/Texas/OK area, as well as a US product.  Both of these can be
>>obtained via HTTP, and are NEXRAD Level III composites.
>>
>>Take a look at http://page4.tamu.edu/USrad.geo for the US product geo,
>>which will work with xastir.
> 
> 
> Your work is what gave me the idea. Im only interested in a specific radar
> location so downloading a 200k+ image to grab a very small piece to
> display in Xastir seems overkill (it also takes about 5min to load it on
> my old laptop)

Thanks!

Of course, for me. it's an extension of 
http://mesonet.tamu.edu/currentradar.html and the other info on that site...

>>It's not unreasonable for me to consider additional products if folks
>>have specific areas they want/need...
> 
> 
> Of course Im specifically interested in the tri-state area (for me that
> means Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio) but that wont help the next guy who wants
> what I want ;)

For the short-term, which site?

>>I'm considering gridding the
>>conterminus US into 6-8 sections with some overlap and doing products on
>>those on a 6 min. basis.  Mostly depends on server load.
> 
> 
> Well that's the thing. I have a spare PC in my basement ;) If I can grab
> the data myself via the Internet Im willing to burn the CPU cycles for my
> location.
> 
> One of the pieces of 'NOAA' data the 'public' does not have access to is
> the radar data.  I've written an OpenSource web based system that can take
> the 'raw' NOAA EMWIN products and turn it into something useful for the
> non-scientific folks interested in weather.  However, the radar data is
> unavailable to us joe public in a non-mangled way.  (eg: I want the radar
> image without the county outlines, logos, etc)

It's not so much that it's considered proprietary as that it's tedious 
to gather and then decode.  It's been deemed more effective to let those 
of us who have to do it anyway, get the stuff all the time and try to 
deal with it.

>>I use a package called GEMPAK written by the UCAR Unidata program.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah. I saw that and thought about trying to use it but it looks like
> WAAAAY more than I want and the online documentation is horrible.  And
> being joe-public Im specifically except from support. Maybe there is a
> specific binary inside the GEMPAX mega software that will do what Im
> asking?

I spent the week with those guys.  Realize that they're all PhD's, some 
in computer science, others in atmospheric science, and a few real 
physicists, and the documentation starts making "sense..."

  > I simply want to grab the latest LEVEL III product via ftp, for a 
specific
> radar location, push it through a C or perl script and have a jpg/png/gif
> come out the other side. (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tg/rpccds.html)

I'll ask Chiz at Unidata.  His nex2img code, which I believe is perl, is 
officially open-source, I think.  Getting the data may be harder.


> If I can figure out how to do that I can add it to the www.noahweather.org
> open source project.

We'll work on it.

>>If you're looking for a project, the Level II data is coming on-line and
>>a powerful contribution to the community could be made by someone
>>looking to develop new code to work with that.
> 
> 
> Im not an .edu or a scientist. Just a citizen interested in weather stuff
> without disposable cash for a $1k a month T1 ;)

And some of us are trying to foster that sort of involvement.

73, gerry
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Network Engineering -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.847.8578
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