Chasing software wants and wishes

[Rob H]

For anyone who has never done this before: It is a PROJECT! You have to download and install these one county at a time, unzip them, and load each county one at a time on GRL3 for each radar site. (Unless you download the National file?? Hoo boy, not something I would attempt!!!) Assuming you want the dirt roads mapped, select "All Roads". I recommend creating a folder for each state, and when you download, change the file name by inserting the county NAME in front. e.g. to download the file for Prowers county Colorado, the filename is "tl_2013_08099_roads.zip". Change that to "Prowers_tl_2013_08099_roads.zip" so you can easily find it when you go to load it on GRL3. If anyone needs any tutoring help, PM me, or I can post it here, too.

That sounds horrible, and no one should have to go through this. Weather software is way behind the ball on being user friendly and bringing modern conveniences to the table.

1) Suit yourself, but I must say this: When I am chasing I don't care about the names of the roads! I just go where the mapping says to go (some minor exceptions to this rule, of course), and I don't need any "voice" prompting me. Who trusts those &%!* things to route you correctly, anyway? 2) Get the free version of GPSgate, and 3) Why do you need a split for GRL3 if you're using Streets & Trips? If you're not mapping with it, GRL3 doesn't inherently need any GPS at all.

All real scenarios:
5/10/10: I don't care about voice, but when I have 60mph storm motion and a large tornado on the ground - I want to know the name of the road that gets me out of the way.
5/22/10: I want to know the name of the road, so that we don't have a navigator looking for what is actually a county line because they were using GR as a map.
4/14/12: It's dark, there are two couplets, and I'm staying back. I still want to see my position relative to the couplets on radar to ensure that they are not getting near me.
10/4/13: This cell is headed towards Wayne. Can we make it into town before it gets there? It sure would be nice to have travel times on routes to get a rough idea.

You get the idea. Maybe I chase too aggressively, but that's a different topic.

In a dream software world none of this would be necessary though would it?

Exactly! Why should I have to install and configure (and possibly pay for) a program that does something that the OS does on its own now? Hell, the last conversation I had with Tim Samaras was him lamenting GPS hardware/software issues - he was very excited for sensor API in Windows 8 and the possibility of other applications using it. There's an attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" lurking around this thread, and it's kind of silly. This software can be better. Maybe someone with existing software will take this thread to heart, or maybe someone working on a new program will be inspired.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Slow to load? I don't know how you're doing it, but all my maps are on my hard drive. There is no "load time". There are default settings in GRL3 to keep the smallest roads from appearing until you zoom in, and that is user adjustable. My settings keep the dirt roads from appearing until I have zoomed in to a horizontal scope of about 20 miles. I'm just trying to help out here. Do any of you need help with this?

I've been using the shapefiles from here, which the author has conveniently packaged into files for each radar site.

The downside is that they do take a few seconds to load when you switch sites. But I can live with that, rather than loading every county for every site manually! I think I'd break down and cry if my hard drive failed or I needed to reformat, after going through all that.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Rob and Brett: You are both correct, though I disagree with some of your "philosophies". I could go into details, but then this starts to become nit-picking and/or off-topic.

Yes, as I previously suggested, it's a BIG JOB. It probably took me ~30 hours to accomplish, but I have a system that works awesome for me. I thought that everybody was doing the same thing! No pain, no gain?

I think I'd break down and cry if my hard drive failed or I needed to reformat, after going through all that.

I'm pretty sure my backed-up GRL3 profile would make this unneccessary.

 

[Rob H]

Instead of doing this by hand, download all the counties, download Quantum GIS for free, and merge the shapefiles by CWA. You can have that 30 hours of your time back.

http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/25061/how-to-merge-multiple-layers-to-one-layer

 

[Scott Sims]

While not Ideal, I have also loaded all the shapefiles from Scott Lincoln's Iowa State page like Brett described above. I loaded the file for each of the plains sites(it took about 4 hours). I went a step further and changed the style file a little to adjust the road colors, and made them all show up at a fairly zoomed out level. It may seem a bit messy of a view to some, (especially with all the metars I keep up too), but the radar data is still very readable at all zoom levels, and perfect for what I want to see.

I like to see the whole road network at a wide shot, because it shows the density and angles of the grid you are going to chase a storm into at a glance. The constant lake/river valleys that need navigated around show up very well at this zoomed out level, and combined in one image with storm tracks and data helps streamline decisions. It has helped a lot on positioning and cell choices.

Delorme's frustrating default setting to wait until 11-0 to show the small roads, only giving you a 5 or 10 mile box to evaluate is what led me to tweak all these settings.

I still run Delorme and split with GPSgate like most everyone else, but usually only use Delorme for a GPS log, to do long routes with lots of turns and or double check the shapefile roads near county lines(as mentioned earlier). The key here, for me, is to tweak your color settings and make sure county lines are not the color of any of your GIS roads... although they may still mask a county line road. I'd throw in a couple screenshots, but my laptop is at home and my work machine doesn't have the shapefiles set up.

 

[Zac Flamig]

It would be interesting to do some sort of dynamic dirt road display, where for example say dirt roads within 3-4 miles ahead of you in your direction of travel get displayed but others do not. Of course this makes overall route planning a bit harder since I typically like to check that the dirt road won't dead end someplace I don't want to be and thus have to scan even farther ahead. But maybe you could account for that too and have all connected dirt roads in the area show up until they reach a paved/major road again.

 

[Brian Russell]

I ended up getting an IBM X60 thinkpad laptop that has linux on it, for some reason it will not accept windows again...a friend of mine who is a real linux pro found the radar program for linux that looks almost like GRlevel3. its called aweather. used it this past weekend and it seems to work ok. it has a few issues on start up but easy to set up and use.

 

[Sean Marlow]

I'd like turn by turn audible directions, something along the lines of what Jeff was saying, that would alway point me to a selected spot in relation to the strongest reflectivity signals in a storm. I could select a certain storm and then select a point in relation to the storm.... this point would move along with the storm and the software would automatically calculate the directions to that point say every 30 seconds or so, and tell me the best way to get there. Of course I could choose to go where I want, but the software would always direct me to the best route to that point. And the software would allow me to change the point in relation to the storm, with a simple click. The software would also be able to transition to using rotation in the storm as the reference if I so desire. Of course this would create all sorts of new problems concerning chaser traffic and problems with people depending on something that could go haywire.

Concerning GPS questions I've had and my new win 8 computer...Most computer people would say I was stupid probably, but I got fabulatech gps software this year for $129. I noticed there was talk of trouble with GPSgate and windows 8 on several forums so I downloaded the free fabulatech software trial and it was hassle free, so I bought it. All you have to do is specify a port and then the different programs share the port. At least I believe they call it sharing. I admit I'm intimidated by computer stuff. I'll work on a truck for hours and enjoy it, but if I have trouble with something or hear of others having trouble with something computer related, I'm willing to pay for what works with no setup or startup hassle. It just better keep on working for that price.

That's pretty much exactly the idea I was tossing around:

Application that combines radar data with good road maps. Would be awesome to get Google Maps all offline. When you're in the field you choose a storm and click the cell to lock navigation. It would get your location, the motion of the storm and calculate turn by turn directions to intercept the storm. Once on the storm it would continue spitting out directions to maintain your preset distance and location from the cell. Every radar update it would read out storm motion information (speed, direction) so you know if it's changing direction. You could take a picture of the storm with phone and it would automagically screenshot display of radar and location.

I think the most useful aspect would be getting an efficient route to intercept. Once you're on the storm it's much easier to follow.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I wish there was an amalgamation of RadarScope radar with Google Maps; or, put another way, the Storm Spotter app with RadarScope's radar. And the ability to control radar transparency.

I also wish that RadarScope radar was available on a satellite feed - i.e., ThreatNet with RadarScope type radar. I always wondered, WHY is the ThreatNet radar so smoothed and cartoonish?? Shouldn't the resolution be at least as good as all the other apps out there??

Jim

 

[rdale]

I wish there was an amalgamation of RadarScope radar with Google Maps;

There are many apps that use a Google background if that's what you're asking for. Usually the imagery resolution is downgraded.

WHY is the ThreatNet radar so smoothed and cartoonish??

On satellites - data size costs money. Much more than via cellular.