Pat,
The bottom line here is that PFMs are not produced for every zone. The
locations are selected primarily for verification purposes and therefore
often coincide with the location of an ASOS or METAR site. For more
info on PFMs take a look at:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/oax/digital_guide.shtml.
There is no stipulation that in order to be operational each zone must
have a PFM. Rather, the forecast grids need to be a "live" product,
updated regularly. At certain times the text products such as zones
(ZFP) and the PFM are created from the grids through the use of
formatters and then are transmitted. Also, the schedule of when the PFM
is produced is not set in stone. Normally it's done twice a day but it
could be often, and at different times.
Another way to do what you are wanting would be to basically design your
own "PFM" by downloading the grids at a regular interval and extract
what you need from them at the points you want using the "degrib"
utility (see: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/NDFD_GRIB2Decoder/index.php).
I know that would be a lot of work but at least it would accomplish what
you are trying to do.
Regards,
Ken
pfranci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
gembuds... ldmbuds... nwsbuds..
In order to introduce PFM's to my intro meteorology students, and as a
tool for friends to use in the collegiate forecasting contest, I wrote
a small parse routine to separate PFM files as they are ingested, and
write them to text files using each respective zone as a filename...
I then created point imaps for general regions of CONUS using the
centroid for each zone given in the latest NWS zone shapefile, and
overlayed that by states and counties to make it easier for people to
choose which PFM they wish to view (i.e. more than one PFM will be
available for some counties)...
you may view / use the imaps here:
http://weather.bgsu.edu/pfm/index.php?img=usa
to make a long story short everything seems to be working well, but
unfortunately not all zones are being processed.
according to the development status site:
http://www.weather.gov/ndfd/development.htm
it seems that all zones should be represented, but unfortunately it
appears that is not the case... for example the three counties I was
immediately interested in are Wood County (BGSU), Portage County (Kent
State) and Williams county (my home town!) ... however over the last
few days no PFM's have come through, and I notice the same for most
other states...
So the questions are... all zones NOT being processed? ... I note that
Alaska has been stated to not be operational yet, but CONUS is
supposed to be... If all zones are not being processed, are there
plans to do so? ... In looking at the gribs I could probably automate
that on one of my local servers, but that would be redundant if there
are plans to do it at the source.
Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!
--pat
