Examples of How To Process Radar Data

Reading Data from a Tape Archive Tape

  1. Put the tape in the tape drive and log on the the machine with the tape drive. Position youself in a directory on a disk with plenty of space.
  2. tar xvf /dev/tape filename
     (tar xvf /dev/tape dumps the entire tape archive.)

Reading a Single Data File from (Most) Data Tapes

  1. Put the tape in the tape drive and log on the the machine with the tape drive. Position youself in a directory on a disk with plenty of space.
  2. Position the tape by skipping the N files before the one you want on the tape.
    mt fsf N
  3. dd if=/dev/tape ibs=65535 of=filename

Reading a Tape's Worth of UF Files

  1. Put the tape in the tape drive and log on the the machine with the tape drive. Position youself in a directory on a disk with plenty of space.
  2. read_uftape radar_name

Reading a Tape's Worth of NexRad/wsr88d Files

  1. Put the tape in the tape drive and log on the the machine with the tape drive. Position youself in a directory on a disk with plenty of space.
  2. tapenex2uf radar_location_name

Reading a Tape's Worth of Files Not in UF or NexRad/wsr88d Formats

  1. Put the tape in the tape drive and log on the the machine with the tape drive. Position youself in a directory on a disk with plenty of space.
  2. tape2uf radar_name

Viewing and Editting Radar Data Using Solo

  1. Convert the radar data to dorade sweep files
    uf2swp uffile dorade_directory
  2. setenv DORADE_DIR dorade_directory
  3. solo
  4. To convert back to UF (assuming one radar volume in dorade_directory)
    swp2uf dorade_directory radar_name uf_directory

Gridding a Radar Data File

  1. Set the environmental variable SCRATCH to the directory where the resulting gridded file will be placed.
    setenv SCRATCH output_directory
  2. qreou <reorder_input_file >reorder_output_file
    where reorder_input_file is a created file that contains all the input parameters like UF file name, ced output file name, grid spacing, radar variable names, etc. More information on setting up input files can be found in our "reorder" documentation (    postscript, pdf). Some sample input files can be found here.
  3. Convert to our pltgks netcdf format (file.nc).
    ced2nc file.ced

Also check out Procedure for gridding NEXRAD level II files.

Gridding a Directory of Compressed Radar Data Files

  1. ufgz2cdfgz uf_directory reorder_input_file
    Note the reorder input file (found in uf_directory) must contain the foll owing lines:
    INPUT: "my.uf";
    OUTPUT: "my";

Viewing Gridded Radar Data

  1. For a quick look at the gridded data:
    ncview netcdf_file
  2. For a "finished" graph use idl. Some sample idl programs are found here.

Other Documentation