ncdc data gap

[Jared Farrer]

I was trying to get data for the 7th of june (ncdc) using KOAX and east Iowa sites. Using a java based program, but their seems to be a data gap. Has anyone else picked up on this? Level 3 data by the way.

 

[rdale]

Check the archive - http://has.ncdc.noaa.gov

 

[Jared Farrer]

Check the archive - http://has.ncdc.noaa.gov

I did and they have tared files. But they do not have untared files. The viewer I am using does not work with tared files.

 

[Michael P. Morris]

Are you using Windows? If so, you can easily untar the data with something like WinRAR. If you're on Mac or Linux, the tar -xvf <filename> command will do the trick as well. Alternatively, they have another repository where you can request untarred files

If you don't want to even deal with that, NCDC has their own Java viewer that will allow you to visualize your files without need to uncompress them. All you have to do is make your request, and when it's finished (you'll get an email) you just type in your order number and it brings it up for you.

Edit: It's also possible that they have been a little slow in updating the archive. This happened to me last semester when I was working on a project for one of my classes and I was not able to get data from a severe storm event.

 

[Jared Farrer]

Are you using Windows? If so, you can easily untar the data with something like WinRAR. If you're on Mac or Linux, the tar -xvf <filename> command will do the trick as well. Alternatively, they have another repository where you can request untarred files

If you don't want to even deal with that, NCDC has their own Java viewer that will allow you to visualize your files without need to uncompress them. All you have to do is make your request, and when it's finished (you'll get an email) you just type in your order number and it brings it up for you.

Edit: It's also possible that they have been a little slow in updating the archive. This happened to me last semester when I was working on a project for one of my classes and I was not able to get data from a severe storm event.

Exactly whats happening here!! No data for the 7th. I am using the nexrad viewer, but you can only use untarred files with their beta version. And as of now their is no data yet. I guess they are just being slow on it.

 

[tom hanlon]

I taught a technology class for a week at the NCDC. I think it was apache but perhaps PHP and MySQL. So I met some of the techies there. They all seemed to be hard working intelligent folks but underfunded and overworked.

In my opinion and judging from my brief experience with them it is entirely possible that there actually is a data gap. If so I guess you are out of luck. It is also entirely possible that they have the data and a glitch kept it from making it to the archive.

I would advise that you find a direct channel to whoever maintains the data and ask politely if they are aware of the gap. I suggest a phone call rather than email.

Picture an academic/government environment with a bunch of smart well educated folks, add in a healthy dose of government chaos, uncertain budgets, political influence on goals and directives and the like, then add in the ever changing options of delivering data as web technology and standards evolve. Then picture a bunch of web servers growing organically as various parts of the organization develop the need to deliver products online. Not a pretty picture from a product longevity point of view. Then picture management making ridiculous requests of overworked techies, as managers the world over tend to do. When I was teaching in a number of government agencies they were all facing hard to implement requests to centralize servers and the like.

Someone at NCDC cares as much about that data as you do. Get on the phone and find that person and see if it can be tracked down.

Oh and by the way... You absolutely need to understand tar files and tar.gz archives and the like. Use google and study up. Basically a tar file is a collection of files, often .tar but file extensions in Unix/Linux are meaningless to the Operating system and useful only to some applications and of course helpful to humans. They will frequently be Gzipped, so you will find .tar.gz or .tgz . Files in unix/linux can contain more than one dot as well. "Gunzip file.tar.gz" and then "tar xvf file.tar". Or "tar xzvf file.tar.gz" to do both unzipping and untarring in one operation. Microsoft has a collection of unix utilities and there is also cygwin for windows.

I am always happy to answer unix/linux apache/mysql/php questions. PM me. Or if the community might be interested in the question and answer then PM me and also post the question in the appropriate Forum.

Best of luck.

 

[Jared Farrer]

It made it up a few days ago. Just a little slow.