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Hello, It appears that a station's priority, ispri in GEMPAK-5.6 sf_qstn and the like, is not used in the FILTER algorithm for sfmap and other programs. Am I right? If so, I would like to tackle the problem of making them use it so a station with a lower ispri (higher priority) gets chosen before a station with a bigger ispri (lower priority). This is the way we use WXP to effectively filter a very dense network of observations in our area. Can you point me to the appropriate GEMPAK routines? Ideally, a single use of sfmap with AREA=dset and FILTER=1 would do what I want; however, for my chosen area, stations that we really want to see, such as KSEA, get omitted in favor of lower priority ones, such as KBFI when FILTER is used exclusively. Currently, I have to go through several iterations of sfmap in order to get it to do what I want, as you can see from this script (note that I use the country field to specify observation type in our files): #!/bin/csh sfmap <<EOF > /dev/null # DEVICE = gf | testsfmap.gif | 1024;768 GAREA = 44.75;-125;50.8;-116.75 SATFIL = $GARPHOME/map/areas/nw_namerica LUTFIL = topo_ltgray2.tbl RADFIL = DATTIM = 0 SFFILE = $GEMDATA/surface/latest/uw.gem MAP = 1/1/1 LATLON = 0 TITLE = 4/-2/0Z Standard Obs PANEL = 0 PROJ = SAT FILTER = no STNPLT = CLRBAR = CLEAR = y AREA = @sa:c/@bf:c/@cm:c SFPARM = skyc:.75;tmpf;wsym:.75;smsl;blnk;dwpf;spri<4;brbk:1:1;mark:2 COLORS = 32;2;7;0;4;0;32 TEXT = small/3//hw run CLEAR = no MAP = 0 title = 0 SFPARM = ;;;;;;stid;spri<4 colors = 32;0 text = tiny/1//hw run area = @uw:c SFPARM = ;;;;brbk:1:1;mark:2 COLORS = 29;19 text = 1/3//hw run area = @rw:c/@av:c/@ap:c/@am:c/@dt:c/@br:c/@gs:c SFPARM = skyc:.75;blnk;wsym:.75;blnk;blnk;blnk;stid;brbk:1:1;mark:2:.7 COLORS = 8;8;32;8 text = tiny/1//hw filter = 1 run area=@sa:c SFPARM = skyc:.75;blnk;wsym:.75;blnk;blnk;blnk;spri>5;brbk:1:1;mark:2 COLORS = 32;7;0;32 text = small/3//hw filter = 1 run exit EOF gpcolor <<EOF colors = 101=white run exit EOF # gpend Thanks for any help. David -- David Ovens e-mail: address@hidden (206) 685-8108 plan: Real-time MM5 forecasting for Pacific Northwest Research Meteorologist Dept of Atmospheric Sciences, Box 351640 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195