[IDV #KUH-661833]: Missing winds

Hi Walt-

> Winds from due north are reported as 360. I believe that the METAR
> messages will report 000 if the wind is calm, but that is the only case.
> Also, for wind direction 999, ///, or NaN is used for missing values
> instead of 0 to avoid confusion with 0 and 360 being the same direction
> (nothing more confusing than letting meteorologists work with data
> formats right? :))

I sent something off to the McIDAS folks.  We'll see what they say.  In the 
mean time, I've been playing around with what we can do on the display side.  
I'm thinking that if the wind is greater than 0 and < 360 or we have 0 
direction and 0 speed, then the barb will be plotted, otherwise not.

I'm not sure if you've done this, but you can use Jython in the station models 
to print out the values.  Here's a couple of item's I've been playing with for 
value plots:

=str(int((DIR/10)*100 + SPD))  (to plot DDFF)
=str(int(DIR/10))+"/"+str(int(SPD)) (to plot DD/FF)

it needs some work to handle zero padding, but it might help you to figure out 
what the raw values are vs. what gets plotted.

> The reason that the wind is 10M/S with no direction is that we failed
> the wind direction earlier.
> 
> Thanks for taking a look at it for me. We are just starting to use IDV
> here for QC, so I'm sure we will find a few more issues later. ;)

OK, you know where to find us. ;-)

Don

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Unidata IDV Support <address@hidden>
> Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010 5:02 pm
> Subject: [IDV #KUH-661833]: Missing winds
> > Hi Walt-
> >
> > > I noticed that on some stations (42002) the wind direction is
> > missing in
> > > the raw message, but IDV is coding the wind direction as 0
> > degrees and
> > > then plotting the wind barb as north. I was wondering if there
> > was a
> > > decoding issue on the server or something with IDV itself.
> > >
> > > KWBC 251900
> > > BBXX
> > > 42002 46/// ///10
> >
> > It's the decoder.  If the wind is missing, it gets set to 0.  Does
> > the wind ever get reported as 0 instead of 360?  If not, we could
> > catch that in the IDV.  But, then you'd never know the wind speed
> > was 10 m/s. ;-)
> >
> > Don
> >
> > Ticket Details
> > ===================
> > Ticket ID: KUH-661833
> > Department: Support IDV
> > Priority: Normal
> > Status: Open
> >
> >
> 
> 


Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: KUH-661833
Department: Support IDV
Priority: Normal
Status: Open