20001213: NEXRAD Level III floater selection for IDD

------- Forwarded Message

To: Eric Horst <address@hidden>,
   Richard Clark <address@hidden>
Subject: 20001213: NEXRAD Level III floater selection for IDD
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:31:19 -0700
From: Tom Yoksas <address@hidden>

>From:  Tom Yoksas <address@hidden>
>Organization:  UCAR/Unidata Program Center
>Keywords:  200012131810.eBDIA9o16889 IDD NEXRAD floater

Eric, Paul, and Rich,

We would first like to thank you on behalf of the Unidata community for
your efforts in providing NEXRAD floater selection for the WSI feed
for the past several years.

As you are no doubt aware, starting January 1 the NWS will be begin
broadcasting unencrypted, zlib-compressed NEXRAD Level III products on
NOAAPORT.  We have been working diligently to provide these products on
the IDD, but we are concerned that the sheer volume of data will swamp
sites that have anything short of spectacular internet connections and
server-class ingest machines.  For this reason, we have decided to
implement a NEXRAD floater stream using a small subset of the stations
available in the NOAAPORT satellite broadcast.  We are hoping that the
availability of these floater products will help prevent IDD sites from
requesting too many of the NOAAPORT NEXRAD products, a situation that
could lead to an IDD meltdown.

WSI has recently informed us that it will continue to offer its existing
services to the Unidata university community for the same cost that is
now stipulated in its contract with the UPC.  We feel certain that a
number of sites currently subscribing to WSI for the NIDS/NOWrad (tm)
products will continue to do so for some unspecified time.  Given this,
the need for NEXRAD site selection for the WSI feed remains.

We are hoping that you are willing to continue your floater site
selection service for the WSI feed and also to act in the same capacity
for the new NEXRAD IDD feed.  We have already setup an IDD NEXRAD
floater feed type and have a prototype page ready for floater site
selection:

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/data/floaters/floaters.html

So, are you willing to continue to provide your excellent NEXRAD
floater selection services?

We would be pleased to credit Millersville University and the College
of DuPage on the floater site selection page and other web documents
pertaining to the new NEXRAD floater feed type if you could continue
this valuable service.

Thanks in advance...

Tom
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* Tom Yoksas                                             UCAR Unidata Program *
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