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AWIPS for your home PC


ThePass

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Rumor on the street is that AWIPS 2 will available to users outside of NWS. Like universities, emergency management, state agency's etc. Just rumors though.

Not a rumor at all! (I've posted this elsewhere, wxmeddler ^_^)

In an effort to keep the Unidata community informed about developments surrounding GEMPAK/NAWIPS transition to AWIPS II, we are pleased to inform you that the National Weather Service (NWS) has notified us that Unidata is free to distribute AWIPS II software, including migrated NAWIPS functionality, to its community.

Source of quote above

AWIPSII page at Unidata

Updates from the Unidata news blog

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not a rumor at all! (I've posted this elsewhere, wxmeddler ^_^)

Source of quote above

AWIPSII page at Unidata

Updates from the Unidata news blog

This will be great when it happens. It is also long overdue considering how long the general technology has been around now. Its not some crazy super secret thing they are using. We are long overdue for everyone to have free software that can really pick apart a model and display whatever you want. Sure you can play with GrADS/GEMPAK/NCL (pick your poison) until you are blue in the face but the fact is its very cumbersome and not easily used operationally and definitely not easy for the hobbyist. Gotta run cron jobs, etc.

The way I understand AWIPS II is the "public" volume browser will look like the just like the NWS one visually (minus some of the $$$ products like full ECMWF of course) but the backbone of how the data is pushed to the user will be similar to the IDV catalogs. Unidata should be damn happy to get the opportunity to release AWIPS II to everyone and integrate all GEMPAK functionality in. It seemed for a while that they were pushing that God awful, useless POS IDV on everyone for operational analysis AND research. Tell me how you are supposed to use IDV for research when it can't even produce publication quality graphics? IDV can do some good things but its overshadowed by the fact that time-matching things like model data and sat/rad /surface data is a major pain in the ass and the whole thing is very slow and cumbersome for me, even with the IDV allocated w/4GB RAM all to itself on my system. Just a POS design. Enough IDV rant.

Seems we should still expect AWIPS II to be a while, I keep hearing the AWIPS II transition date is being pushed back at the WFOs, at least around western region. Would not expect AWIPS II to be publicly available until at least spring, thats my sense. I guess we will watch the blog for updates and hope its sooner.

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This will be great when it happens. It is also long overdue considering how long the general technology has been around now. Its not some crazy super secret thing they are using. We are long overdue for everyone to have free software that can really pick apart a model and display whatever you want. Sure you can play with GrADS/GEMPAK/NCL (pick your poison) until you are blue in the face but the fact is its very cumbersome and not easily used operationally and definitely not easy for the hobbyist. Gotta run cron jobs, etc.

The way I understand AWIPS II is the "public" volume browser will look like the just like the NWS one visually (minus some of the $$$ products like full ECMWF of course) but the backbone of how the data is pushed to the user will be similar to the IDV catalogs. Unidata should be damn happy to get the opportunity to release AWIPS II to everyone and integrate all GEMPAK functionality in. It seemed for a while that they were pushing that God awful, useless POS IDV on everyone for operational analysis AND research. Tell me how you are supposed to use IDV for research when it can't even produce publication quality graphics? IDV can do some good things but its overshadowed by the fact that time-matching things like model data and sat/rad /surface data is a major pain in the ass and the whole thing is very slow and cumbersome for me, even with the IDV allocated w/4GB RAM all to itself on my system. Just a POS design. Enough IDV rant.

Seems we should still expect AWIPS II to be a while, I keep hearing the AWIPS II transition date is being pushed back at the WFOs, at least around western region. Would not expect AWIPS II to be publicly available until at least spring, thats my sense. I guess we will watch the blog for updates and hope its sooner.

Actually, as long as the US Gov pays the approximately $250K/yr fee, they are allowed to release the maps any way they want to... nothing says they will though.

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Actually, as long as the US Gov pays the approximately $250K/yr fee, they are allowed to release the maps any way they want to... nothing says they will though.

Although the US Government uses our tax money to essentially fund Euro data, I'd think that it would still be kept out of the public AWIPS II data sources. The Euro guys charge to basically fund/keep studies going to make their model better and if the guys would drop the price for hobbyist for non-commercial publication, they'd make plenty. I've seen some outrageous figures for the full data on the model. Wunderground (for some reason) is giving it away free right now but I think that will stop eventually. It's on 3-hour intervals but not out to 240 hours sadly.

Edit: Just thought.. and for wunderground to do what they're doing with the Euro precip data especially... they are totally making themselves more obvious in the market of forecasting than they ever were. Even if they required premium or a secondary charge on top, it'd most likely be worth it!

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Although the US Government uses our tax money to essentially fund Euro data, I'd think that it would still be kept out of the public AWIPS II data sources. The Euro guys charge to basically fund/keep studies going to make their model better and if the guys would drop the price for hobbyist for non-commercial publication, they'd make plenty. I've seen some outrageous figures for the full data on the model. Wunderground (for some reason) is giving it away free right now but I think that will stop eventually. It's on 3-hour intervals but not out to 240 hours sadly.

Edit: Just thought.. and for wunderground to do what they're doing with the Euro precip data especially... they are totally making themselves more obvious in the market of forecasting than they ever were. Even if they required premium or a secondary charge on top, it'd most likely be worth it!

http://www.ecmwf.int/products/catalogue/tariffs.html

Price for unlimited data with no restrictions on secondary-product (that is, maps and text output) distribution is about $250,000/yr at the current exchange rate. Wunderground is paying at least half that for the hi-res precip data alone. They likely have a max account and are likely planning to add a commercial subscription for things like ensemble members and monthlies.

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http://www.ecmwf.int/products/catalogue/tariffs.html

Price for unlimited data with no restrictions on secondary-product (that is, maps and text output) distribution is about $250,000/yr in today's money. Wunderground is paying at least half that for the hi-res precip data alone. They likely have a max account and are likely planning to add a commercial subscription for things like ensemble members and monthlies.

That's a pretty crazy price schedule - complete with formulas for calculating the price. If it's $250k/yr, and Wunderground can get 1,000 subscribers, that would be $20/month per subscriber. That would be pretty cheap for the individual or hobbyist to gain access to the full suite.

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