20050615: strange new station in central Nebraska!

Clint,

Change MHN to KMHN in the station table so that CMHN won't match on it.
Unless you want to use that station table to decode old SAO format
data with the 3 character ID's, the 4 character METAR match will always work.
The search always tries the 4 character ID first, and then if
not found, it will try to match on the 3 character ID if it is
a Cxxx or Kxxx identifier- which was really useful when transitioning
to METAR from SAO.

You will end up with CMHN stored as an extra station (lat/lon will be -9999.
until the table is updated or the file is updated with SFSTNS.

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support

>From: Clint Rowe <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Nebraska Geosciences
>Keywords: 200506151600.j5FG0UZu017428

>
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>Chiz,
>
>Recently, a "new" station started getting plotted in Nebraska, but
>it's obviously not a Nebraskan station as it's consistently much 
>colder and often exhibits an extreme wind shift compared to nearby 
>stations.  Check out MHN in west-central Nebraska (just WNW of TIF)
>on the attached surface plot from this morning.  MHN (Mullen, NE)
>hasn't reported in ages (since modernization, I think), so I looked 
>in our raw METARs and found the following METAR for CMHN (which 
>isn't in any of the gempak station tables and can't be found at
>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/tg/siteloc.shtml.  Regardless, it appears 
>to be a Canadian station (probably in southeastern Ontario or
>Quebec, given the weather).
>
>
>149 
>SACN82 KWBC 151408^M^M
>METAR CMBR 151400Z AUTO 07007KT 18/18 RMK AO1 T01810181=
>METAR CMCT 151400Z AUTO 12008KT 19/18 RMK AO1 T01880180=
>METAR CMCW 151400Z AUTO 15006KT 20/19 RMK AO1 T02020191=
>METAR CMHN 151400Z AUTO 14005KT 16/16 RMK AO1 PAST HR P0003
>T01590159 50014=
>METAR CMRI 151400Z AUTO 08009KT 16/16 RMK AO1 8012 SLP985
>T01600160 50046=
>METAR CMSB 151400Z AUTO 13006KT 18/17 RMK AO1 T01790165 50002=
>
>In the same raw file, KMHN reports
>KMHN NIL
>
>
>So, how to deal with this?  I could delete Mullen from the station
>table so it doesn't get plotted (quick and dirty, "solves" the
>problem -- but certainly not elegant).  I could try more to figure
>out where this station is and add it to the station table, but I 
>notice that Canadian stations only have three-letter IDs in
>sfstns.tbl (could it be added as CMHN instead of MHN?).
>
>Also, I'm curious as to why the temperature and dewpoint are plotted
>as tmpc/dwpc instead of the requested tmpf/dwpf?  Are US stations
>decoded and stored as degrees Fahrenheit while non-US stations are
>stored as degrees Celsius and gempak doesn't think it needs to 
>convert them for display?
>
>Clint
>-- 
>====================================================================
>Clinton M. Rowe
>Associate Professor
>Meteorology/Climatology Program                  phone:(402)472-1946
>Department of Geosciences                          fax:(402)472-4917
>University of Nebraska-Lincoln                        address@hidden
>
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