More questions about displaying warnings

Hi Steve,

Glad to see you are back.

I still have a couple of things I don't understand about displaying
warnings and also with GPWARN.

Let me start off first with NMAP and the WARN category under the MISC
header.  What I am confused about is that in version 5.6j when you
click on the "Edit" button (the one which lets you change the colors
and so forth of the warnings)  there is also two other options which
are new that give you the choice of clicking on "County" or "Outline".
My impression is that if you click on "Outline" it will outline the
warned counties while if you click on "County" it will highlight the
warned county as a color fill.  Are these assumptions correct?  If they
are not correct then what are those buttons supposed to do?  If the
assumption is correct then how come I don't see anything when I click
on them (or anything at all for that matter)?  I do have decoded files
for the warnings but they won't display and I am unsure as to why. So
what can I check to see the warnings and get them displayed?

Now I will ask about GPWARN.  I have been playing with GPWARN the last
two days and I do get it to plot up warnings.  So that is good.  What
is not good is I can't figure out how to get it to do what I want.  I
want to be able to display the county outlines over the imagery on
NMAP2....whether it be satellite or radar. I have not been able to
figure out how to just get outlines to display. Oh sure, I've had some
success in getting just an outline but I've had to make the background
black to blend in with my NMAP2 background.  It looks great by itself
but overlaid on imagery you have the black color blotting out the
imagery....so that is not acceptable.  Also, I am having trouble
understanding the WWATT command line. I understand that it is supposed
to show warnings so many minutes prior to the warning going into effect
and then displaying it so many minutes after the warning has expired.
Where I am having problems is first of all I just wanted to plot the
tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings. I was able to figure out the
line colors, line width's , etc for the current warnings. But on
warnings that are expired (I am assuming they are expired)....I am
getting color filled counties or color filled counties with diagonal
lines through them.  What I don't understand is that I thought I set
the colors (in the gpwarn.config file) to show black....like the
background.  If this was the case then I shouldn't see any color fills.
I also commented out all the other warning lines in the gpwarn.config
file so only the tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings would
display.  Yet I was still getting color filled areas. I don't
understand this. What I want is to be able to display the county
outlines of warnings on the imagery and I really don't want to see
expired warnings ...unless it is for about a 15 minute period or so.
To take into account that sometimes convective warnings might be issued
several minutes ahead of the actual effective time and to display the
warnings for only 15 minutes after  the expiration time I've set my
WWATT = 15/15.   That seems right doesn't it?  So assuming that is
correct then what do I need to do to just show the outlines of the
warnings?  I was able to change the outline colors for expired warnings
and also change the line type from solid to dashed (which is what I
would like to do) but I can't seem to stop those color fills from
popping up.  I don't think I can do this but can I take out all the
"exp_" headers and values from the gpwarn.config file?  Or will that
not have any effect on what is displayed?

So basically the bottom line is I want to display warnings on the
imagery in an outline form.  Why can't I do it through the NMAP2
section WARN which looks like it gives you the option to outline or
color fill?  And why is there color fills when using GPWARN when,
according to my understanding, there shouldn't be or at the very least,
be black just like the background.

As always, I would appreciate any help or advice you have.  Thanks alot.

Kevin Polston
Senior Instructor, NWSTC
Kansas City MO 64152

816-880-9314 ext 273




Unidata Support wrote:

> Kevin,
>
> There are 2 different ways to display warnings.
>
> 1) The dcwarn decoder that you are using store the information in the
>    decoded files you mention below (this is an NCEP decoder).
>
>    You can display these notifications in GPMAP or NMAP2 as the
>    red, blue, green markers. The datatype.tbl entry you need to
>    check on is "WARN", which as I provide the distribution is
>    set to $GEMDATA/storm/warn. If your GEMDATA variable is set to
>    /usr1/nawips/metdat, then you are good to go. Otherwise, make sure
>    you are setting GEMDATA correctly.
>
>    In NMAP2, you will see this data when you use the data type "MISC"
>    and select "WARN".
>
>    In GPMAP. see the help information on configuring "WARN" as one of the
>    parameters.
>
> 2) I provide a program called "GPWARN". This program will use the
>    raw/undecoded bulletins (from the NWX tree) to plot zone and county
>    outlines.
>
>    See the online help for gpwarn for examples on plot settings.
>    The WWFIL templates that I defined in for use in GPWARN are:
>    WWFIL    = nonpcpwarn;winterwarn;floodwarn;tstormwarn;tornadowarn
>
>    each of these is defined in datatype.tbl, eg:
> ! Text files for warnings
> TORNADOWARN  $TEXT_WARN/torn_warn      YYYYMMDDHH.torn           ....etc.
> TSTORMWARN   $TEXT_WARN/tstrm_warn     YYYYMMDDHH.tstrm          ....etc.
> FLOODWARN    $TEXT_DATA/fflood/warn    YYYYMMDDHH.warn           ....etc.
> WINTERWARN   $TEXT_WARN/winter         YYYYMMDDHH.winter         ....etc.
> NONPCPWARN   $TEXT_WARN/noprcp         YYYYMMDDHH.noprcp         ....etc.
>
> The environmental variables TEXT_WARN and TEXT_DATA are set in the Gemenviron 
> file
> (TEXT_DATA is the root of the NWX data tree, and TEXT_WARN is 
> $TEXT_DATA/watch_warn).
>
> If you use the NWX file action I provide, and then $TEXT_DATA would most
> likely point to /usr1/nawips/metdat/nwx on your system.
>
> Steve Chiswell
>
> >From: "Kevin Polston" <address@hidden>
> >Organization: UCAR/Unidata
> >Keywords: 200306232201.h5NM0xLd028128
>
> >Hi Tom,
> >
> >You will be happy to know I resolved my problem with the data not being 
> >stored
> >properly.  I don't know exactly what happened but I just did the "brute 
> >force"
> >method of fixing it. That is, I removed the entire nawips 5.6j and 
> >re-installe
> > d
> >it.  So I got everyhting working again.  :-)
> >
> >I am having a problem still with just a couple of thinsg and perhaps you can 
> >h
> > elp.
> >I am wanting to use 5.6j and display the warnings for counties as either 
> >outli
> > nes
> >or as shaded in counties.  However.....at this time I am not getting any 
> >warni
> > ngs
> >displayed and I am unsure of why this is.  Watches display just fine and I 
> >hav
> > e
> >the data directories set up in a very similar way.
> > For instance the watches are saved in the directory
> >/usr1/nawips/metdat/storm/watches    while the warnings are saved in
> >/usr1/nawips/metdat/storm/warn
> >
> >I went through each directory and made sure the owner and user names were set
> > up
> >right.......I double checked the permissions and the data is coming in.  It
> >appears the decoder is working too since I have the data in the directory and
> > when
> >I do a "cat" on it I see decoded warnings there.  So I am unsure of what to 
> >do
> >  to
> >get this to display.  Perhaps something is not set up quite right in my
> >datatype.tbl.....since I haven't checked it here recently after I 
> >re-installed
> >everything......but I "think" it's ok.  So what would you suggest I do?  I 
> >use
> > d to
> >have the warnings displaying before when it was either jsut the blue, red or 
> >g
> > reen
> >dots that would show up. But I really would like to be able to outline the
> >counties.  Hopefully this isn't too hard of a problem to solve.  I also did a
> >"touch command" to the directory from LDM to make sure it was able to write 
> >th
> > ere
> >and it is.   What do you think?
> >
> >Thanks.
> >
> >KP
> >
>
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