[McIDAS #ITE-161076]: Plotting satellite derived winds in McIDAS

Hi Carol,

Sorry for the slow reply!

re:
> Wow, that was super easy! See the attached.

Looks good!

re:
> What does "default=current or most recent reporting hour"?

The default McIDAS POINT plot/contour programs (all of which run
PTDISP or PTCON, respectively) is to try and plot/contour the
user-specified parameter for the current hour (current as by
the real-time clock).  Unidata McIDAS, on the other hand,
has been enhanced to allow the user to specify that the time
plotted/contoured should match the time of the display in
the output frame.

Example:

SF 1
ERASE F
IMGDISP RTGOESR/CONUSC13 LAT=30 87 MAG=-2;MAP
SFCPLOT WINDB OLAY FRAME

This allows the user to plot older imagery and overlay it with day+time
matched point values.

re:
> Does that mean
> the oldest points could be 60 minutes ago? Or the oldest report could be
> from 3 hours ago?

Yes, if it is 59 minutes past the hour and you plot current TEMP,
then the observations plotted could be 59 minutes old.  If you
plot a parameter that is only available every three hours, then
the value could be up to 3 hours old, etc.

re:
> Also, I was trying to set the width of the wind barbs to be wider by using
> WID=3 in the SFCPLOT command, but that didn't seem to work.

There is no WID= keyword for SFCPLOT.

re:
> SFCPLOT WINDB LSIZE=20 COLOR=3 WID=5

From this example, it is evident that you already know about the
LSIZE= keyword.

re:
> How do I make the width of the lines for wind barbs bigger? Do I need to
> set something in GD?

Yes, GD is the routine that allows one to set the plot line widths.
Since I have never tried using it for wind barbs, I can only say
that I _think_ it should work, but I can not guarantee that it
actually does.

NB:

Setting the line width using GD changes the line width used from
that point on in the McIDAS session until one changes it back, or
the session exits.  Please remember that a McIDAS session is
either one that is created by running McIDAS commands in an
environment explicitly created by 'mcenv', or created when
an individual command is run.

An interactive McIDAS session is one created by 'mcenv'.
Another kind of interactive session is one created in a script
with code that looks like:

 ...
mcenv -f 1@800x1000 << EOF
  eg.k
  imgdisp.k RTGOESR/CONUSC13 STA=KMIA MAG=1 EU=IMAGE
  map.k H
  gd.k 3
  sfcplot.k WINDB OLAY FRAME
  gd.k INI
  sfcplot.k T OLAY FRAME
  frmsave.k 1 example.gif
EOF

re:
> Thanks,

No worries.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: ITE-161076
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed
===================
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