19990312: question about mcidas upper air (cont.)

>From: Dana Quinn <address@hidden>
>Organization: College of DuPage
>Keywords: 199903112333.QAA28909 McIDAS-X

Dana,

The following was the answer I was originally going to send you concerning
the failure of HODO when specifying ILX and OTX as character IDs for
upper air sites:

ILX and OTX are identifiers for NEXRAD sites.  The upper air sites for
Lincoln, Il and SPOKANE, WA do not have character IDs associated with
them (according to the most recent Air Force Air Weather Service Master
Station Catalog).  Apparently GEMPAK and WXP allow one to identify the
upper air site by the NEXRAD station ID.  The problem here is that the
WMO id number for the NEXRAD sites is different from the WMO number for
the RAOB sites:

MSL ILX
 IDN   ID    STATION NAME         DATA TYPES       ST CO  LAT    LON     ELEV
745599 ILX   LINCOLN NEXRAD                 D      IL US  40:09N 089:21W 212
MSL: DONE

MSL 74560
 IDN   ID    STATION NAME         DATA TYPES       ST CO  LAT    LON     ELEV
745600       LINCOLN UPPER-AIR          RP         IL US  40:09N 089:20W 178
MSL: DONE

MSL OTX
 IDN   ID    STATION NAME         DATA TYPES       ST CO  LAT    LON     ELEV
727861 OTX   SPOKANE NEXRAD                 D      WA US  47:41N 117:38E 745
MSL: DONE

MSL 72786
 IDN   ID    STATION NAME         DATA TYPES       ST CO  LAT    LON     ELEV
727860       SPOKANE (RAOB)             RP         WA US  47:41N 117:38W 728
727861 OTX   SPOKANE NEXRAD                 D      WA US  47:41N 117:38E 745
MSL: DONE

You can see from these listings that the stations really are different:
the elevations are not the same, and the longitude for ILX is different
than the longitude for the RAOB site.

Now, the question boils down to whether or not the Air Force Master
Station Catalog is correct.

The only way around this is to use the WMO station IDN in your HODO
invocations.

Tom