20061016: watch/warning polygons in McIDAS and GEMPAK

Is GEMPAK and/or McIDAS capable of drawing the NWS polygons of updates =
watch/warning areas?  I know GEMPAK has a decoder, but I never could get =
it to draw the polygon defined by that lat/lon points in the update =
using the standard GEMPAK tools.

Thanks,
Robert Mullenax
CSBF/NMSU/PSL

>From address@hidden  Mon Oct 16 10:15:30 2006

>Hi Robert,

>I requested this feature on McIDAS last summer...nothing on it yet. As for 
>GEMPAK, I don't know.

>*******************************************************************************
>Gilbert Sebenste                                                     ********
>(My opinions only!)                                                  ******
>Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University                      ****
>E-mail: address@hidden                                  ***
>web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu                                      **
*******************************************************************************

>From address@hidden  Mon Oct 16 11:30:10 2006

>      WWDISP displays the watch/warnings by counties. I think Robert is 
>after the polygons that are now included at the end of the notices as a 
>list of LAT/LON.  As far as I know, the only McIDAS app that produces a 
>polygon plot is the Tornado warning plotter in the McIDAS development 
>set.  Here is an example

>     http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/paw/tornado/torwarn_101606_070.gif

>     This is currently active tornado warning The BLACK/YELLOW region is 
>the polygon included at the end of the warning text.

>Russ Dengel

Fingerhut, William A @ LSC wrote:

> The Mcidas command WWDISP should do this.
>  
> The IDV will do some also.
>  
> Bill
>  
>
> < Bill Fingerhut, Professor           PHONE: 802-626-6257 >
> < Meteorology Dept                    FAX:   802-626-9770 >
> < Lyndon State College                                    >
> < Lyndonville, Vt 05851                                   >
> <                                                         >
> < EMAIL:     address@hidden            >
> <            address@hidden                  >
> < WWW:       http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/                   >
> <                                                         >
> < disclaimer: I know nothing - I only work here.          >

>From address@hidden  Mon Oct 16 13:47:45 2006

> Gilbert,
> 
>             Thanks. A frame like this is created each time a new tornado 
> warning is issued by the NWS. This particular display is formated for 
> the PDA Animated Weather (PAW) website (  
> http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/paw ). The display software is written as 
> standard McIDAS application, allowing users to overlay the information 
> on any size navigated image frame.  Here is a list of the applications 
> involved:
> 
>             TORDEC -> TORnado DECoder runs as a McIDAS keyin. It "reads" 
> the lastest tornado warning text and decodes the information (location, 
> speed, direction, duration,  warning counties, polygons, and cities in 
> the path) into a McIDAS Meteorological Dataset (MD) file. I place this 
> in a cronjob and run it every 2 minutes.
> 
>             TORDISP -> reads the MD file using standard ADDE transaction 
> and plots the warnings on any navigated McIDAS image frame.
> 
>             TORWARN -> monitors the Tornado MD file for new entries. It 
> creates the PAW display and pushes it to our web server. Depending on 
> the list of warning counties, the application produces EMAIL and/or SMS 
> messages for list of individuals interested in getting notification of 
> the warning.
> 
>              The entire process is automated. The only time it requires 
> attention is when it receives a bogus warning causing the decoder to 
> stop, or insertion of a new individual into the TORWARN notification 
> queue.  These programs are NOT part of the standard McIDAS core 
> applications set. They are included in the development package 
> distributed with  a McIDAS release.
> 
> Russ