Re: [gembud] GEMPAK question from an amateur weather geek

• To: "Josh B." <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: [gembud] GEMPAK question from an amateur weather geek
• From: "Daniel Richard Fuka" <drf28@xxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:09:10 -0400 (EDT)

Howdy Josh,

It sounds like you are a geek and can figure out a lot on your own, so I
will just send you to a website and can help answer questions you may have
off line.

Here is a great project for people wanting to get a lot of data into gempak:

http://www.noaaport.net/

They have a kewl news feed option... and if you are a true geek, you can
get an old c-band dish for free and build your own noaaport for between
$80 and $400 ... depending on the radio.

Data goes into various directories defined in:

/home/gempak/GEMPAK5.11.1/Gemenviron.profile
(obviously dependent on version and install dir).
example:
grep DATA Gemenviron.profile
  GEMDATA=/data/ldm/gempak ; export GEMDATA
.....

File names and locations are defined in:
/home/gempak/GEMPAK5.11.1/gempak/tables/config/datatype.tbl

You can also get lots of the data from nws ftp site:
ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov:21/SL.us008001

Let me know when you need a little more help and I can give you a few step
by step instructions on how to download and view a forecast, metar, and
radar.

Enjoy,
dan

Hey Folks,
    I was a long-time DA user until I switched all my computers to Linux
a year ago.  Since then I've gone without any weather programs, and the
itch has been getting worse this whole time.  I recently discovered
GEMPAK and McIDAS-V, and got both up and running on my computer.  McIDAS
is useful but it doesn't seem to be as powerful or flexible as GEMPAK,
however after hours of scouring the documentation I'm still unsure of
how to get data into GEMPAK.  I understand how it should work in
principle with LDM, but since I'm an individual with limited means I
don't have access to an LDM system.  My question then is is it possible
to use publicly available data such as METAR cycle reports and raw
NEXRAD data, such as what I might get from NOAA's public servers, in
GEMPAK, and if so how do I convert this data into a format GEMPAK can
use?  Thanks for any assistance you folks can provide!

--Josh Benson
Open Source Society
_______________________________________________
gembud mailing list
gembud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For list information or to unsubscribe,  visit:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing_lists/

• References:
  • [gembud] GEMPAK question from an amateur weather geek
    • From: Josh B.