ICT and DDC

[David Williams]

Hello all,
Need a little help here. Could you explain what ICT and DDC stand for and why they are important?

Thanks

 

[Brandon Goforth]

ICT is Wichita and DDC is Dodge City.

 

[Kirk Chestnut]

Many NWS (National Weather Service) stations are co-located at airports thus the local airport code is used as a form of shorthand.

http://www.airportcodes.us/

 

[Darren Addy]

Look at the Status Bar in your browser as you roll over the links on the following page
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/organization.php
and you'll see that each NWS (National Weather Service) office has a 3 letter code in the URL (Uniform Resource Listing or "web address").
DDC is Dodge City: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ddc/
TOP is Topeka: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/top/

When you are first learning, it can be annoying, but acronyms are part of the "shorthand" of any field, and you'll just have to learn as you go along.

You can also get the codes for All Stations in a given state from this page (which is also great for getting model skew-Ts from each station): http://www.weather.gov/tg/siteloc.shtml
Normally the "K" is dropped from the front, because we're lazy (and it's redundant).

That last link also has a "Search by station identifier" field. To find out where MCK is, for instance you'd type KMCK in that box and hit Search.

PS...To learn about how to read Skew-Ts (and their importance): http://www.meted.ucar.edu/mesoprim/skewt/
(registration required).

 

[David Williams]

Thanks everyone. Darren that totally makes sense. I have been a pilot a lot longer than a storm chaser, and I'm really starting to realize that aviation weather data (like AOA, etc.) and station identifiers have a very functional and practical place in storm chasing.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

There's still times I have to stop and look one up. There are several CWAs that you see all the time and end up chasing in all the time ... for me, it's EAX, TOP, ICT, OAX, etc. ... but there are tons that I can never remember, especially up in Iowa and the Dakotas.