gweather/Locations

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 16:20:12 +0200
> From: Piotr Smyrak <piotr.smyrak at heron.pl>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-gnome at freebsd.org
> 
> On Sat, 15 May 2004 20:49:41 -0700, "Kevin Oberman" <oberman at es.net>
>  wrote:
> 
> > > From: Piotr Smyrak <piotr.smyrak at heron.pl>
> > > 
> > > Do you know of any information source on the format of gweather
> > > Locations file?
> > > 
> > > /usr/X11R6/share/gnome/gweather/Locations
> > 
> > Use the source. Search for 'url' in weather.c and you will find
> > that it gets data from various places at NOAA. The primary
> > information for current weather is at metar.noaa.gov. Forecasts
> > come from other NOAA sites and I am not sure how many non-US
> > locations are available.
> 
> Yes, this is what I was doing, but all I get is some understanding
> of the fields, but I fail to find information on what kind of code
> most of them require, and where I can get those codes. 
> 
> So those are: name, code, zone, radar. And for: 
> 
> loc3=Anchorage PANC AKZ015 alaska
> 
> name is Anchorage
> code is PANC 
> zone is AKZ015
> and finally radar is alaska
> 
> The code is actually an ICAO code for air ports, but what about zone
> and radar? Is zone a postal zip or what? 

They are a "weather zone". Forecasts are made on larger zones that usually
cover several reporting stations. That's what the zones are for. The
'radar' value is an even larger area (especially near the Arctic and
Antarctic due to the location of the satellites at the equator.

The available North American radar areas are "East CONUS, West CONUS,
Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Hawaii. Related zones are available for
hurricane areas. I will admit that I have no idea about gathering
information for areas outside of the US. I suspect you will need to try
tracking down sources of satellite and forecast data for Poland, if any,
from some European weather agency.

> I wanted to update info on Polish cities. And yesterday I got the
> ICAO codes ready, but I would also like to fill the other two
> fields. Also I was wondering about the regions codes, whether there
> is any world standard in there, see:
> 
> [NA_US]
> name=United States
> regions=AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME
> MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN
> TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
> 
> ... and:
> 
> [EU_UK]
> name=United Kingdom
> regions=SE MI NE NW SW NI SC WA
> 
> ...but:
> name=Australasia
> regions=AU NZ
> 

Actually, the format is by continent or other global region. The top of
te file contains the list of regions: NA EU AF OZ ME AS M_ AT for
N. America, Europe, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, Middle East, Asia,
Central and South America, and Atlantic. Each of those regions has a
list of more local regions, usually countries or, for larger countries,
states. 

While weather has been a hobby of mine for many years and I have set up
the initial weather web page for Lawrence Livermore National Lab many
years ago when I worked there (http://www.llnl.gov/llnl-bin/weather), I
am a long way from being a meteorologist. I am uncertain how many of the
NOAA designators have any international parallels.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634