[python-users] Decluttering Surface Observations with MetPy

• To: python-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [python-users] Decluttering Surface Observations with MetPy
• From: Bryan Guarente <guarente@xxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2017 15:36:33 -0600

I am trying to plot the surface observations for some archived datasets
over ALL of Canada, Greenland, and the northern United States for a course
I am going to be teaching.  Is there a declutter option like in IDV for
surface observations in MetPy or Python more generally?  I have already
reduced the font size, so the surface plots are smaller which makes it
slightly better, but doesn't fix all of the problems.  I also added color
to make it more obvious when overlapping numbers were for different
portions of the surface obs.

I considered looping through the dataset and masking out the ones that are
within X degrees of one another in the lat and long dimensions, but that
might drop some "good" observation stations in favor of the less accurate
ones.  Maybe this means it would be best to plot data only from certain
types of observation stations like ASOS and AWOS, or non-AUTO stations.  Is
there a way to do that easily within MetPy or Python?

Are there other solutions out there to this problem?

Thanks.
Bryan

-- 
Bryan Guarente
Meteorologist/Instructional Designer
The COMET Program
Boulder, CO

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: [python-users] Decluttering Surface Observations with MetPy
    • From: Ryan May