20021119: Decoding metars (without carriage keys) to GEMPAK format

James,

The decoders need a way of telling where a bulletin starts and stops.
The character sequences that the decoder recognizes as bulletin
separators are the FOS and AFOS identifiers, such as those in the
IDD data streams.

The easiest way to identify your raw reports as bulletins is
to use the AFOS begin sequence of ZCZC and end sequence of NNNN
such as is described in the archives:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/mfs/63/5282

For example, you could have a metar as simple as:

ZCZC

KDEN 182353Z 26008KT 10SM FEW080 SCT150 BKN240 08/M12 A3020=

NNNN

cat'ing this to dcmetr, and using the -c flag to set the dattim to
021119/0000 for this bulletin:

cat test.metar | dcmetr -c 021119/0000 -v 4 -d - YYYYMMDDHH_test.metar
[574914] 021119/1243 [DC 3]  Starting up. Version 5.6.i
[574914] 021119/1243 [DCMETR 7]  DCMETR version:  3.3
[574914] 021119/1243 [DC 2]  read 75/65535 bytes strt 0 newstrt 75
[574914] 021119/1244 [DC 2]  read 0/65461 bytes strt 75 newstrt 75
[574914] 021119/1244 [DC -9]  End of input data file.
[574914] 021119/1244 [DC 5]  Normal termination.
[574914] 021119/1244 [DC 2]  Number of bulletins read and processed: 1
[574914] 021119/1244 [DC 6]  Shutting down.

This yields:

 GEMPAK-SFLIST>r
 PARM = PMSL;ALTI;TMPC;DWPC;SKNT;DRCT;GUST;WNUM;CHC1;CHC2;CHC3;VSBY;P03D;P03I;  
 
        MSUN;SNOW;WEQS;P24I;TDXC;TDNC;P03C;CTYL;CTYM;CTYH;P06I;T6XC;T6NC;CEIL;  
 
        P01I;PWSP;PWDR                                                          
 

    STN    YYMMDD/HHMM      PMSL     ALTI     TMPC     DWPC     SKNT     DRCT
                            GUST     WNUM     CHC1     CHC2     CHC3     VSBY
                            P03D     P03I     MSUN     SNOW     WEQS     P24I
                            TDXC     TDNC     P03C     CTYL     CTYM     CTYH
                            P06I     T6XC     T6NC     CEIL     P01I     PWSP
                            PWDR
    DEN    021119/0000  -9999.00    30.20     8.00   -12.00     8.00   260.00
                        -9999.00 -9999.00   806.00  1502.00  2403.00    10.00
                        -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00
                        -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00
                        -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00   240.00 -9999.00 -9999.00
                        -9999.00


Steve Chiswell

>From: James Murakami <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200211191915.gAJJFP427026

>Hi.
>
>I want to create GEMPAK format surface files from raw metar reports. When I ru
> n 
>dcmetr, nothing gets decoded. I vaguely recall that dcmetr expects to "see" 
>carriage return keys (^M) or something like that (not present in the metar 
>reports I have). Can I run dcmetr in some way so that the reports are decoded,
>  
>or is there some other gempak program that does the job?
>Thanks in advance.
>
>James
>
>--------------------------------------
>James Murakami
>Staff Meteorologist/Student Affairs
>Department of Atmospheric Sciences
>University of California, Los Angeles
>405 Hilgard Ave.
>Los Angeles, CA  90095-1565
>
>
>   e-mail:  address@hidden
>telephone:  310-825-2418
>      Fax:  310-206-5219
>---------------------------------------
>