Locally Saving Radar scans

[Weather Track US]

Hello, I have been trying to look up this topic for a while and have not been able to find any topic on this. But here's my deal:
I use a radar application called "GRLevelX" More specifically, GRLevel3 2.00. I am looking to start weather forecasting and coverage on my own terms, I'll get to my story later on in a different post.

The point I want to bring up today, is that I'd like to save the radar scans that I receive from any radar site and have it locally saved to my computer so that I can go back in the future after a hurricane, tornado outbreak or general thunderstorms to have a recap of the radar/velocity images.

Would there be some kind of way to do this? It's basically an archive.

|Background: I am a young teenager who was originally involved in politics, but then got tired of the debates and the hate. I decided to move to weather, something I have been studying since Hurricane Matthew. I've been looking to start my own YouTube broadcasts to bring coverage to folks who may have the internet but don't have access to television or radio or have access but are tired of news media hype. I've also tried to take this opportunity to educate young youth like myself to get inspired by weather and maybe one day be a real meteorologist who can save people's lives. I am not about the hype and/or the drama, I am about sending people a message with facts so I can help save more lives during times of severe weather. I live in a state that frequently gets storms, hurricanes and tornadoes, it is important that people stay safe. Most people don't take my age group seriously when it comes to weather. With my inspiration about weather and experience, I hope adults can finally get a sense that it's not the age or the looks, rather, the experience and knowledge one has.|

[bdgwx]

No need to save them off. They are available on the NCEI website.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/has/HAS.FileAppRouter?datasetname=7000&subqueryby=STATION&applname=&outdest=FILE

If you have a level II viewer like GR2Analyst you can find the volumes here.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/noaa-nexrad-level2/index.html

[SharonA]

Although as mentioned above, the data is available elsewhere after-the-fact, here's the answer to the original question.  This is for Windows 7 and 10.  Warning - it is super easy to chew up a ton of disk space saving these things.  When hopping between multiple sites, I've racked up 100+ gig for a single big event at times.

Files are retained according to setting inside each application, AND those settings are applied as it is running and again when you invoke it.  You set the retention period by navigating to File/Configure Polling and filling in the "Keep files for ___ hours" prompt.  Note you may have to stop the polling in order to edit the polling configuration.  Also, if you set retention to several days' worth, leave it polling for hours and hours, then close things up, the files that weren't purged by the time you closed out will be sitting out there taking up disk space until you go back into that site.  Not the program - you have to visit that radar site itself, then the program looks in that directory and sees and wipes the dozens of files from three months ago when you last pulled up that radar.

So the moral of the above is - if you want to save the files for later use, move/copy them elsewhere, and do it before the retention period ends or before you visit that radar site again.  Also, you can usually recover some disk space by cleaning out the download directories.

Files are downloaded every 4-5 minutes to site-specific subdirectories using the paths shown below:

/users/{you}/AppData/Local/GR2Analyst_2/{site}
/users/{you}/AppData/Local/GRLevel3_2/{site}

Also there will be a subdirectory for ptypes, and GRLevel3 has an additional file "grlevel3_log.txt".  Site is lowercase in the paths.

 

The two programs diverge at this point -

GR2Analyst files will typically be in the 5-10 MB size range but can be much larger if things are hopping (like tonight with Hurricane Laura making landfall) and have the naming convention:

SITE_CCYYMMDD_HHMM with no file extension.  GR2Analyst file names are the only time in all of this where the site is in upper case.

Here's my GR2Analyst data for Lake Charles as of a few minutes ago:

 Directory of C:\Users\Z\AppData\Local\GR2Analyst_2\klch
26-Aug-20  22:59 PM        13,382,915 KLCH_20200827_0253
26-Aug-20  23:06 PM        13,370,212 KLCH_20200827_0259
26-Aug-20  23:13 PM        13,420,322 KLCH_20200827_0306
26-Aug-20  23:20 PM        13,384,107 KLCH_20200827_0313
26-Aug-20  23:27 PM        13,789,648 KLCH_20200827_0320

GRLevel3 will give you files anywhere from 50k-500k, and I think - but have not confirmed - it downloads only the panels you are viewing, so if you are single-panel BR you won't be getting the additional data for SRV - but don't quote me on that.  GRLevel3's naming convention is:

site_CCYYMMDD_HHMMSS.rv3x - note file extension

Here's Falcon Field (Atlanta) files from earlier today:

26-Aug-20  14:54 PM           454,696 kffc_20200826_184747.rv3x
26-Aug-20  14:58 PM           458,046 kffc_20200826_185300.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:03 PM           452,248 kffc_20200826_185747.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:08 PM           455,662 kffc_20200826_190234.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:13 PM           455,451 kffc_20200826_190732.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:13 PM           379,694 kffc_20200826_191231.rv3x
 

Hope that helps!

 

 

 

 

[Weather Track US]

On 8/26/2020 at 11:54 PM, SharonA said:

Although as mentioned above, the data is available elsewhere after-the-fact, here's the answer to the original question.  This is for Windows 7 and 10.  Warning - it is super easy to chew up a ton of disk space saving these things.  When hopping between multiple sites, I've racked up 100+ gig for a single big event at times.

Files are retained according to setting inside each application, AND those settings are applied as it is running and again when you invoke it.  You set the retention period by navigating to File/Configure Polling and filling in the "Keep files for ___ hours" prompt.  Note you may have to stop the polling in order to edit the polling configuration.  Also, if you set retention to several days' worth, leave it polling for hours and hours, then close things up, the files that weren't purged by the time you closed out will be sitting out there taking up disk space until you go back into that site.  Not the program - you have to visit that radar site itself, then the program looks in that directory and sees and wipes the dozens of files from three months ago when you last pulled up that radar.

So the moral of the above is - if you want to save the files for later use, move/copy them elsewhere, and do it before the retention period ends or before you visit that radar site again.  Also, you can usually recover some disk space by cleaning out the download directories.

Files are downloaded every 4-5 minutes to site-specific subdirectories using the paths shown below:
/users/{you}/AppData/Local/GR2Analyst_2/{site}
/users/{you}/AppData/Local/GRLevel3_2/{site}
Also there will be a subdirectory for ptypes, and GRLevel3 has an additional file "grlevel3_log.txt".  Site is lowercase in the paths.

The two programs diverge at this point -

GR2Analyst files will typically be in the 5-10 MB size range but can be much larger if things are hopping (like tonight with Hurricane Laura making landfall) and have the naming convention:

SITE_CCYYMMDD_HHMM with no file extension.  GR2Analyst file names are the only time in all of this where the site is in upper case.

Here's my GR2Analyst data for Lake Charles as of a few minutes ago:

 Directory of C:\Users\Z\AppData\Local\GR2Analyst_2\klch
26-Aug-20  22:59 PM        13,382,915 KLCH_20200827_0253
26-Aug-20  23:06 PM        13,370,212 KLCH_20200827_0259
26-Aug-20  23:13 PM        13,420,322 KLCH_20200827_0306
26-Aug-20  23:20 PM        13,384,107 KLCH_20200827_0313
26-Aug-20  23:27 PM        13,789,648 KLCH_20200827_0320
GRLevel3 will give you files anywhere from 50k-500k, and I think - but have not confirmed - it downloads only the panels you are viewing, so if you are single-panel BR you won't be getting the additional data for SRV - but don't quote me on that.  GRLevel3's naming convention is:

site_CCYYMMDD_HHMMSS.rv3x - note file extension

Here's Falcon Field (Atlanta) files from earlier today:

26-Aug-20  14:54 PM           454,696 kffc_20200826_184747.rv3x
26-Aug-20  14:58 PM           458,046 kffc_20200826_185300.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:03 PM           452,248 kffc_20200826_185747.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:08 PM           455,662 kffc_20200826_190234.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:13 PM           455,451 kffc_20200826_190732.rv3x
26-Aug-20  15:13 PM           379,694 kffc_20200826_191231.rv3x

Hope that helps!

Hey, SharonA! I found the radar image scans from KLCH (Lake Charles, LA) of Hurricane Laura making landfall. But they're an rv3x file format? What am I supposed to do with those if I want to play them back or just view them?

[bdgwx]

1 hour ago, Weather Track US said:

Hey, SharonA! I found the radar image scans from KLCH (Lake Charles, LA) of Hurricane Laura making landfall. But they're an rv3x file format? What am I supposed to do with those if I want to play them back or just view them?

I believe you drag-n-drop them onto GRLevel3.

[Weather Track US]

4 hours ago, bdgwx said:

I believe you drag-n-drop them onto GRLevel3.

Thanks. Although, I am going to have to wait a bit to use them. GRLevel3 randomly decided to say my trial period has expired... EVEN THOUGH I HAD A KEY ENTERED. so... yeah... Have to somehow get in touch with someone at Gibson Ridge to help.

[Uncle Bobby]

You do know you can save the files by clicking file>save image, right?  You have to do that in real-time, of course, not two days later, though if you have had GRL3 running for awhile you can back up and save images from, say, 45 minutes ago.  On my computer they are saved as .png files, but I don't know if that is universal.

 

Have you been to this page?  Read everything very carefully.  You may be able to solve your problem there.

http://www.grlevelx.com/grlevel3_2/

[Weather Track US]

Uncle Bobby, I solved my issue by locating my registration key. Program works normally now. I have a server where I can load up multiple instances of GRLevel3 at once and have it run at different radar sites and I'll be able to input them into GRL3. I don't know if i should let the radar images play or if I could leave them stationary.

[bdgwx]

No need to do any of that. Just download the radar data from the NCEI site I linked to above. You will need to run the GRUtils.exe app to convert the data into rv3x files so that GRL3 can load them up.

Even better...buy GR2Analyst and download the L2 volume files conveniently from Amazon and drag-n-drop them directly onto GR2A.