Re: Level III NEXRAD data

> MIchal Kraszewski wrote:
> 
> Anne,
> 
> I got your e-mail address from Brian Miller from IIHR - Hydroscience &
> Engineering who was corresponding with you some time ago.
> 
> I'm PhD student in the same Institute and for purposes of my project I would
> like to use Level III NEXRAD data provided by UNIDATA through LDM. I have some
> questions and concerning related to ZLIB compression with which those data are
> compressed. Could you point me to anybody in UNIDATA that compresses those
> data files and who could provide me some information about how to uncompress
> them back to NIDS format?
> 
> I will appreciate your help,
> 
> 
> Michal Kraszewski
> _____________________________
> IIHR - Hydroscience & Engineering
> The University of Iowa

Hi Michal,

We here at Unidata do not compress the data.  We simply relay it.  The NWS
compresses the data before they put it on their SBN.

Although I have never used it, a member of our community, Dan Veitor, wrote an
uncompression program, ucnids.c, that uncompresses the data.  Here's the most
recent message in our support archive that refers to that program:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/mfs/65/5147?55#mfs.  Sounds like Pete
Pokrandt at Wisconsin has the latest version that he would provide to you. 
Further searches in the archives
(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/glimpsedocs/ghldm.html) may yield more information
for you.

However, simply uncompressing the data may still leave you with a lot of work to
do depending on how you want to use the data.  Do you want to view it?  Or use
it as input to something else?  If viewing it is your goal, I recommend that
instead of going through the uncompression work, consider using MCIDAS or
GEMPAK.  Both of those packages have already handled the decompression and
subsequent massaging to put the data into an image format.   They are freely
available from our website, and we provide support for both packages.

Please let me know if you have further questions.  In general, support questions
should be directed to address@hidden.  However, you can continue this
thread with me although I may later refer you to other folks depending on what
your needs are.

Sincerely,

Anne

-- 
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Anne Wilson                     UCAR Unidata Program            
address@hidden                 P.O. Box 3000
                                  Boulder, CO  80307
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