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20020303: hosting ADDE access to Unidata NEXRAD composite imagery

>From: Unidata User Support <address@hidden>
>Organization: Unidata Program Center/UCAR
>Keywords: McIDAS ADDE NEXRAD composite

Tom and Hsie,

I am writing to see if you would be willing to add a new dataset to the
list that you currently allow outside access to via ADDE.

For some time, Unidata has been producing radar composites generated from
NEXRAD Level III Base Reflectivity (N0R) products as grib messages and
injecting them in the FNEXRAD IDD feed.  Recently, we (Steve Chiswell
using GEMPAK) also started producing a 1 km national N0R composite
product in GINI format (GINI is the format of images sent in NOAAPORT)
and have been injecting it in the NIMAGE IDD feed.  Additionally, I
have been converting the 6 km national, 1 km regional floater, and RCM
composite grib messages to McIDAS AREA images and injecting these in
the FNEXRAD IDD feed.  We are very close to announcing the general
availability of these products to the community, but before doing so, I
want to have a reasonable set of cooperating ADDE servers that can
serve the data to remote McIDAS and MetApps users.  This is where you
fit in.

Tom,

You are not getting the NIMAGE feed from us, because you have a direct
ingest of the NOAAPORT GINI imagery (channels 1 & 2) through your PDI
system.  I don't know if you are getting the FNEXRAD feed, but if you
are, you are also getting the 1 km floater, 6 km national, and RCM
composite images in PNG compressed AREA format.

Hsie,

You are already getting the NIMAGE feed from motherlode/thelma, so you
are currently receiving the 1 km national composite images, but you are
not yet decoding and filing them (because we havn't told you about them
until now).  I don't know if you are getting the FNEXRAD feed, but if
you are, you are also getting the 1 km floater, 6 km national, and RCM
composite images in PNG compressed AREA format.


So, are you willing to ingest, decode, file, and publically serve the
composite imagery?  This would be a big service to the community in the
same way that your serving of the other datasets via ADDE has been for
some time.  I am ready to assist each of you in getting these datasets
setup -- I am quite willing to do the setup myself it you prefer.  In
order to do so, I would need 'ldm' and 'mcidas' logins to your server
machines (Hsie, I already have yours), and some direction as to where
the data should be stored.

Some relevant size information is in order:

Product                    File size after decoding
--------------------------+------------------------
10 km national RCM           166880 bytes
1 km regional floater N0R    361280 bytes
6 km national N0R            401280 bytes
1 km national N0R          14208533 bytes

Since both of you runs McIDAS, you can take a peek at what these products
look like before deciding.  I have already setup 4 ADDE server sites to
host the data:

pscwx.plymouth.edu
atm.geo.nsf.gov
papagayo.unl.edu
adde.ucar.edu

The ADDE dataset that contains these images is the same on all machines:

ADDE group: NEXRCOMP

To get the complete effect, first FTP a new enhancement for the N0R
composites and an updated one for the RCM composites:

<login as 'mcidas'>
cd mcidas7.8/data
ftp ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
  <user> anonymous
  <pass> your_full_email_address
  cd pub/mcidas/data
  binary
  prompt
  mget BREF24.*
  get MDR.ET
  quit
ln BREF24.* ~/data           (Hsie, you will need to adjust this for your setup)
rm ~/data/MDR.ET
ln MDR.ET ~/data

Then, give the following a whirl from a McIDAS-X session's command line
in a session where the frame sizes are at least 600x800 (I use 695x950):

DATALOC ADD NEXRCOMP PAPAGAYO.UNL.EDU
DSINFO IMAGE NEXRCOMP

Assuming that the above went well, then try:

IMGDISP NEXRCOMP/1KN0R-NAT STA=TWX MAG=-5 EU=BREF24 REFRESH='EG;MAP H;BAR'

Look at the display and see where the interesting action is and then
load at full resolution on a point in the middle of the most
interesting echos.  As I write this, the most interesting spot in the
country is in Florida:

IMGDISP NEXRCOMP/1KN0R-NAT STATION=KTBW MAG=1 EU=BREF24 REFRESH='EG;MAP 
FILE=OUTLCNTY OUTLUSAM MCOL=5 1 WID=1 1;BAR'

You can do the same sort of thing for the other products.  Use the
BREF24 enhancement for the N0R composites and the reworked MDR.ET for
the RCM composite.

Before you finish, remember to either delete the DATALOC for NEXRCOMP
or set it to LOCAL-DATA:

DATALOC DEL NEXRCOMP
 - or -
DATALOC ADD NEXRCOMP LOCAL-DATA

Please let me know:

o what you think of the composites in general

o if you are willing to add the NEXRCOMP dataset to the datasets you are
  currently hosting through ADDE

Thanks in advance...

Tom

>From address@hidden Mon Mar  4 06:33:07 2002
>Subject: Re: 20020303: hosting ADDE access to Unidata NEXRAD composite imagery

Tom:

We still do ingest a few products off the IDD, such as NIDS. I would 
be willing to ingest just these products and feed them. We had a 
network outage yesterday and I just got things restarted this 
morning. After I make sure everything is stable again, I'll write 
back.

Tom