20010218: McIDAS-x: front file %j wrong?

>From: "Neil R. Smith" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Texas A&M
>Keywords: 200102190230.f1J2U0L10924 McIDAS FRONT FRONTDISP

Neil,

>My MDR.BAT has a section to add fronts to the map.
>The fronts are not being added.
>The ROUTEPP.LOG is saying
>       FRONT: WARNING: Unable to open /data/ddplus/fronts/SUS1050
>       FRONT: No fronts available in ASUS file(s)
>The day-of-year is not 050, it's 049.
>Why is mcidas-x asking for 050?

See below.

>pqact.conf file entry for fronts:
># fronts in ASUS1ddd
>DDS     ^ASUS01 .... ([0-3][0-9])([0-2][0-9])
>        FILE    /data/ddplus/fronts/ASUS1%j
>
># forecast fronts in FSUS2ddd
>DDS     ^FSUS02 .... ([0-3][0-9])([0-2][0-9])
>        FILE    /data/ddplus/fronts/FSUS2%j

OK. Are the files there?

>MDR.BAT entry (excluding other stuff):
>REM - draw fronts (FRONTS)
>REM - Save to file for WWW (SVGIF)
>
>FRONT GRA=1 LWIDTH=2 2 1 LSIZE=12 6
>FRMLABEL C IMA=1 LEV=254 "MDR RADAR W/ FRONTS (DAY) (JDAY) (HHMM)Z - TEXAS A&M 
>METEOROLOGY
>SVGIF 1 MDRFR.GIF
>
>ROUTEPP.LOG entry:
>FRONT GRA=1 LWIDTH=2 2 1 LSIZE=12 6
>FRONT --- BEGIN
>FRONT: WARNING: Unable to open /data/ddplus/fronts/ASUS1050
>FRONT: No fronts available in ASUS file(s)
>FRMLABEL C IMA=1 LEV=254 "MDR RADAR W/ FRONTS (DAY) (JDAY) (HHMM)Z - TEXAS
>A&M M
>ETEOROLOGY
>FRMLABEL: Done
>SVGIF 1 MDRFR.GIF

Front tries to find a frontal analysis as close to the time of the
displayed image/plot.  To do this, it might have to look ahead an hour.
This is the reason for the WARNING about not being able to
open the ASUS1050 file.

>Date command on platform running mcidas-x (as of this writing):
>coriolis{ldm}30% date; date +%j
>Sun Feb 18 20:26:40 CST 2001
>049

OK.

>List of files in /data/ddplus/fronts (as of this writing):
>coriolis{ldm}45% ls -lt
>total 88
>-rw-r--r--    1 ldm      data        1534 Feb 18 19:38 ASUS1050
>-rw-r--r--    1 ldm      data       12498 Feb 18 13:34 ASUS1049
>-rw-r--r--    1 ldm      data        9986 Feb 18 13:12 FSUS2049
>-rw-r--r--    1 ldm      data        7154 Feb 17 07:50 ASUS1048
>-rw-r--r--    1 ldm      data        4030 Feb 17 01:39 FSUS2048
>
>Thanks. -Neil

At this point, ASUS1050 exists.  It may be that it does not have any
valid fronts in it.

I recommend that you transition away from the use of FRONT to FRNTDISP
as FRONT is scheduled to be removed from McIDAS with the next release.
FRNTDISP is an ADDE command; it uses the RTWXTEXT dataset to get the
frontal information.  If you have setup XCD decoding of IDD data, then
you should have the textual data that comprises RTWXTEXT available to
you on your own ADDE server.  If you do not, then you can setup a
DATALOC to point at a remote ADDE server.

For, instance:

DATALOC ADD RTWXTEXT papagayo.unl.edu
FRNTDISP NACONF LATEST

DATALOC ADD RTWXTEXT adde.ucar.edu
IMGDISP RTIMAGES/GW-IR LATLON=32 120 MAG=-2 EU=IMAGE REFRESH='EG;MAP H'
FRNTDISP OLAY FRAME

Please let me know if you need help in setting up local access XCD
generated RTWXTEXT data on your system.

Tom